June 1, 2012
As Broadcast on Bill Bennett’s Morning in America
By Seth Leibsohn
A quick tale of two pieces of legislation and a quick note on civics—One piece of legislation passed the Senate by a vote of 85 to 14 and the House by a vote of 342 to 67. Another piece of legislation passed the Senate by a vote of 60 to 39 and the House by a vote of 219 to 212. The first was passed by what you might call supermajorities; the second by the narrowest of margins. The first was the Defense of Marriage Act, signed into law by President Bill Clinton; the second was the Affordable Care Act, aka “Obamacare,” and signed into law by President Barack Obama.
Now, when the Supreme Court took up Obamacare, President Obama said the following, just two months ago:
I'm confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected congress.
….[than an] unelected group of people would somehow overturn a duly constituted and passed law.
Well, this is a good example and I’m pretty confident this court will recognize that and not take that step.
“An unelected group,” “a duly constituted law,” “a strong majority.” Is a piece of legislation that passed with no bi-partisanship a duly constituted law with a strong majority? Maybe. But what about a law with bipartisan support that passed by 25 more votes in the Senate and by 123 more votes in the House? Will President Obama take this odd position on judicial review with respect to the Defense of Marriage Act as he did with Obamacare? I ask this as the First Circuit Federal Court of Appeals just held the Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional. And yes, it will head to the Supreme Court.
Of course we know President Obama’s views on this because he and his Attorney General, Eric Holder, made the decision they would not enforce or defend in court the “duly constituted” law passed with a “strong majority” because they happened to merely disagree with it.
If you can now begin to wonder why that extra-Constitutional power-grab, to not defend a law your oath requires you to defend, was contemptuous of the Constitution, perhaps you can now also see the raw political calculation made to challenge the Supreme Court on Obamacare by lecturing the American people on the exact opposite of the whole point of what we know as Judicial Review—a practice that goes back to John Marshall and Marbury v. Madison.
If the President doesn’t understand that the role of the courts is, in fact, to analyze laws (and let’s remind him, laws only get passed by majorities) and sometimes hold them unconstitutional, that is, strike them down, then he understands very little about not only the history of America but the role of the Constitution, the three branches of government, and, in fact, democracy itself. I never attended the University of Chicago but if this is what was taught at its law school, in his classroom, those students ought to get their tuition back. To say what he did about the Court and Obamacare, and to do what he did on the Defense of Marriage Act is not any kind of brave defense of the Constitution or constitutional rights, it is, rather, a playing of politics with our Constitution and that, I always thought, as I learned it from the writings of the left about the Nixon administration, was what is called “An Imperial Presidency.”
And, of course, imperialism is a danger to democracy, a threat to it, because it is oppositional to it. One can make this point regardless of one’s political and policy views about the Defense of Marriage Act or Obamacare, it is a point about constitutionalism. It is a fundamental misunderstanding about one of the very pillars of our democracy. Of course, unless, President Obama actually knows all this and is just lying deliberately, which would be worse.
But I think he may actually not know all this because time and again he betrays his ignorance about history just as he betrays his ignorance about things he was to be oh-so-smart about, like other nations’ views.
Rewind to his first foray into bad history. When he was running for President, Barack Obama—in justifying his position that he would meet with Iran without precondition and in his first year of office—said the following: “That is what Kennedy did with Khrushchev; that’s what Nixon did with Mao; what Reagan did with Gorbachev.”
As I’ve pointed out before, in reverse order, Ronald Reagan met with no Soviet leader during the entirety of his first term in office, not (ever) with Brezhnev, not (ever) with Andropov, not (ever) with Chernenko. He met only with Gorbachev, and only after he was assured Gorbachev was a different kind of Soviet leader — and after Perestroika, not before.
If Barack Obama wants to affiliate with Richard Nixon, that’s certainly his call. But one question: Was Taiwan’s expulsion from the U.N. worth “Nixon to China”? That was the price of that meeting.
As for the Kennedy-Khrushchev summit of 1961, Kennedy himself said “He (Khrushchev) beat the hell out of me.” Paul Nitze said the meeting was “just a disaster.” And, Khrushchev’s aide, after the first day, said the American president seemed “very inexperienced, even immature.” Khrushchev agreed, noting that the youthful Kennedy was “too intelligent and too weak.” So successful was the summit that the Berlin Wall was erected later that year and the Cuban Missile Crisis, with Soviets deploying nuclear missiles in Cuba, commenced the following year.
That was Obama’s understanding of world history. It was upside down, wrong, what a teacher would give an “F” grade to a student for writing about the summit. And yet that is the history President Obama used and has used in negotiating with Iran. Let me pause here to say we should not be negotiating with Iran, we should be confronting Iran. Let me add parenthetically that of course bad history doesn’t end here, this week we also received a mis-lesson—I should say our ally Poland received a mis-lesson—on this history of the Holocaust and World War II courtesy of President Obama. He clearly is a man who knows very little at a time when we need a president who knows a lot.
But back to Iran for just a moment. Even during a month when Iran’s President Machmoud Achmadinejad reiterated a desire for the “destruction of the Zionist entity,” i.e., Israel, the US continued to negotiate with Iran. Now please remember, in advance of the Baghdad negotiations that just concluded in abject failure, I had quoted Secretary of State Clinton and others in the administration who were optimistic about these meetings. Indeed, one headline read “Clinton Optimistic on Iran nulear talks.”
Well, how did those talks go? The Financial Times headline: “Iran talks end in harsh lesson for west.” A Reuters headline: “Iran has enough uranium for 5 bombs.” By the way, the first line of that story: “Iran has significantly stepped up its output of low-enriched uranium and total production.” A Washington Post headline: “Iran nuclear talks: World powers to continue discussion, but no progress on a deal.” And Bret Stephen’s report in the Wall Street Journal on what transpired: “Iran did more than just reject demands to shut down its underground enrichment facility at Fordo and ship its near-bomb-grade uranium abroad. It also announced it would do precisely the opposite: install more centrifuges at Fordo, increase the rate of enrichment, and forbid any U.N. inspections of suspected military sites.”
This, after optimism ahead of the talks that we all warned and continued to warn about. And now, Thursday, we get the report based on satellite imagery that Iran is actually hiding the development of nuclear weapons at its Parchin site, a place it refuses IAEA inspectors to enter.
When you do not know your own history, when you do not know your own democracy, when you do not know your own Constitution, it becomes increasingly easy to not know other nations’ histories, other nations’ ideologies, and other nations’ governing constitutions—even when they have nothing but evil designs on and for you. You think sanctions will work? Read the words of modern Iran’s founder, Ayatollah Khomeni. He said “We know how to fast.” Indeed, Iran does. The irony here—it is Iran’s appetite we are feeding.
Just as it was Syria’s appetite this administration fed. President Bush pulled our ambassador out of Syria years ago. Obama knew better, and in an attempt to reset our foreign policy toward Syria there, he restored our ambassador; only now, after Syria’s charnel house geared back up, to pull our diplomatic corps out of there again.
You don’t know history—ours or others’; you don’t know democracy—ours or others’; you don’t know ideology—especially our enemies’, and this is the government you get: closing down our own understanding of constitutionalism domestically, endangering the world abroad, and endangering ourselves at home. This is, to quote the French philosopher Jean-Francois Revel, how democracies perish. They perish by not understanding what makes and keeps us strong, and they perish by, to quote the American political scientist Jeane Kirkpatrick, “[D]epending for its very survival on the promises of its adversaries.” And of course they perish by playing politics with the Constitution.
We can keep going this way for a while I suppose, but if we do, we will have to ask ourselves soon enough—if we are alive to ask ourselves—what is it, just what is it, we are governing here? A democracy that thrives and enriches and empowers its own people while it teaches something to the world? Or, indeed, something else that is dependent on the vagaries, tyrannies, and appetites of the world—and vagaries, tyrannies, and appetites that we, indeed, helped to feed?
You see, ignorance can destroy you from within as well as from without.
If we don’t see that choice and those possibilities now, it will—not far down the line—be too late to see them, ever. I submit, we’ve come too far, fought too hard, and bled too much for that.
Showing posts with label SL. Show all posts
Showing posts with label SL. Show all posts
Friday, June 1, 2012
Saturday, May 5, 2012
Seth Leibson 05-04-2012
Time To Wake Up
May 4, 2012
As Broadcast on Bill Bennett’s Morning in America
By Seth Leibsohn
A lifetime of welfare dependency. A capitulation to enemies that has come back to haunt us. A human rights fiasco. An economy with no promise. That is what we see this week from President Barack Obama both in his campaign for re-election and in his policies.
Let’s begin with a lifetime of welfare dependency. The Obama campaign unveiled a campaign slide show entitled “The Life of Julia” this week. I guess Barack Obama likes to make composites of women because here is another one, what he and his campaign view as the typical American woman. Here is how the slide show is introduced: “Take a look at how President Obama's policies help one woman over her lifetime—and how Mitt Romney would change her story.” Fine, we go to the first slide—don’t worry, I’ll go no further. We have baby Julia and the slide says “Under President Obama: Julia is enrolled in a Head Start program to help get her ready for school. Because of steps President Obama has taken to improve programs like this one, Julia joins thousands of students across the country who will start kindergarten ready to learn and succeed.” Then, it says “The Romney Ryan budget would cut Head Start,” etcetera, etcetera.
Let’s stop right there. Why does the Obama campaign begin and suppose we all will gel to, affiliate, and associate with, or be a child in need of Head Start? Head Start is a Great Society program for disadvantaged children—a several billion dollar program for, well, not-the-average American. At least not now. So why do we start with this person? Here’s why, to quote another keen observer of this: The President and his left-wing view of the world think of a woman and think “a woman can live her entire life by leaning on government intervention, dependency and other people's money rather than her own initiative or hard work.” They truly believe living off the government, by the government, and from the government is the best way to live. And of course a program like Head Start has tens of thousands of government employees, don’t forget that.
But what many don’t know is that Head Start is an abject failure. Study after study has shown its ineffectiveness and, sometimes even, harm. Here’s just one, as summarized by the Heritage Foundation: A scientifically rigorous evaluation called the 2010 Head Start Impact Study found the program “ineffective at providing a boost to children while in kindergarten and the first grade,” the years Head Start is geared toward. Just a little more:
For the four-year-old group, access to the program failed to raise the cognitive abilities of Head Start participants on 41 measures compared to similarly situated children who were not allowed access to Head Start. Specifically, the language skills, literacy, math skills, and school performance of the participating children failed to improve.
Alarmingly, access to Head Start for the three-year-old group actually had a harmful effect on the teacher-assessed math ability of these children once they entered kindergarten. Teachers reported that non-participating children were more prepared in math skills than those children who participated in Head Start. Head Start failed to have an impact on the 40 other measures.
The Heritage analysis concludes if there’s one anti-poverty education program that should be cut, it’s Head Start. But the left presupposes American women in it. Why? Margaret Thatcher put her finger on this kind of thinking, this ideology (a word we will come back to), if you will. She said this kind of welfare state thinking is the “debilitating concept of the all-powerful state which takes too much from you to do too much for you, constantly substituting the politicians' view of what the people should have for the people's own view of what they want.”
Is Head Start something we should want? A billions dollar program that doesn’t work but does make a discipline of government dependence and government employment? According to the Obama team, the answer is yes.
Another headline: “Russia's top military officer has threatened to carry out a pre-emptive strike on U.S.-led NATO missile defense facilities in Eastern Europe if Washington goes ahead with its controversial plan to build a missile shield.” This is the very shield President Obama is now proposing because he thought dismantling the Missile Defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic, which he did, would satisfy the Russians. That, obviously, was not the case. President Obama upset and weakened our allies in Poland and the Czech Republic, we now see, for no benefit at all. And in appeasing the Russians then, by throwing our allies overboard, we showed no strength or resolve to the Russians so they can today feel free to cavalierly threaten pre-emptive strikes against us again—as if this were 1961 all over again.
And, this week, we also have another human rights fiasco. The New York Times headline today “Dissident’s Plea for Protection From China Deepens Crisis.” CNN puts it this way: “Chen case is another human rights issue for Obama.” Staying with CNN a moment, here is how their story opens:
Iran, Syria and now China. President Barack Obama faces a third front of vulnerability on his administration's record of defending human rights with the muddled situation involving activist Chen Guangcheng.
With his re-election campaign just hitting full stride, Obama hoped to capitalize on foreign policy successes such as last year's raid that killed Osama bin Laden to blunt Republican attacks on the sluggish U.S. economic recovery.
When CNN says you have a muddled situation, a sluggish economy, and points out that you are using the killing of bin Laden as a political ploy, all in two sentences, you have a problem. CNN could have gone on to add Sudan and so many other places—do people even know that Islamist Northern Sudan is bombing the South of Sudan again? We’ll leave that for another day so surfeited are we just now with Iran, Syria, Egypt, China, Russia, Venezuela, and other places that have become both more dangerous to us on President Obama’s watch and less solvable due to President Obama’s policies and ideology.
It should actually be no surprise that we have muddled the human rights case of a Chinese dissident and human rights lawyer. This administration has shown from year one it doesn’t know what human rights abuses are. It was Obama’s very own Assistant Secretary of State Michael Posner who told Chinese officials two years ago during a human rights summit that our two countries both have work to do. The AP reported that in discussing human rights with China, Posner “raised on his own” Arizona’s anti-illegal immigration law as part of our own dark record. Yes: the very law the Supreme Court, and even its liberals, seem to be in support of. As Arizona is to illegal immigrants, China is to killing of millions of citizens. It’s all the same moral plane according to this administration.
Just as the Mullahs in Iran were on the same moral plane as the citizens of Iran when President Obama sent a new year’s message to the leaders and citizens of Iran in the same message, saying our two countries both had the same hopes and dreams—the problem was one country’s rulers shoots people in the streets and the other’s does not, and the dissidents in the first country heard from the leader of the second only support for those who were doing the shooting, totally ignoring (and killing off) their pleas for help.
When you do not understand human rights you do not know how to work for them. Ideology is what is behind this, it’s an ideology that cares more about diplomacy and negotiations for the sake of diplomacy and negotiations over the actual God-given rights of people and human beings. It’s what somebody smart once said of the UN: The UN cares about lines and maps, it doesn’t care about people. And that’s the same exact ideology that makes a compulsion, a talisman, of government programs whether they work for people, for human beings, or whether they fail them.
It’s an ideology, at center, that puts the state above the person.
And it is that ideology that is the exact opposite of our Founding where the state was to be the servant of the person because the person, the human, was given rights by God and created the state, not the other way around where the state created the person and made the person subservient to it. Remember the words: “to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”
When you understand our Founding and the appropriate human relationship to government, you understand human rights. When you do not understand our Founding, you cannot understand human rights because the state, in that case, not the person, is the entity of preferred status and your mission is to protect and defend the state, not the individual or the human.
It is this same ideology that is driving our economic stagnation. Here’s all I need to know about this, because it’s the example that reveals both President Obama’s view of America at the same time it reveals his view about economics. When he was in France three years ago and asked whether he believed in American exceptionalism he said “I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.” Two socialist economies, one a complete basket case based on out-of-control, cradle-to-grave spending where the state takes too much from you in order to do too much for you. When asked about American greatness, his mind went to a comparison with Greece.
So today, as a result of no reduction in spending and no plan to inspire growth and prosperity, we will get a jobs report whose numbers will not decrease the unemployment rate. And, thus, we will hear pleas for more spending and even more taxes, and we will hear nothing about how to inspire, energize, and promote small business or private sector growth.
Why is this all of a piece with a blinding ideology? Bill Bennett likes to quote the philosopher Hanna Arendt as saying there is nothing so blinding as ideology. He’s right to do so. Arendt wrote more on this in her book on Totalitarianism, saying “all ideologies contain totalitarian elements.” Why do they? She gave several reasons, the most important, she wrote, was “ideological thinking becomes independent of all experience from which it cannot learn anything new.”
And that is President Obama. An ideologue who sees states and statism, governments and governmental programs, not humans and not individuals and not humans and individuals who can operate free of the state but must instead be cared for by it. He was trained in this school of thought, a school of thought that taught America (and thus America’s Founding) was responsible for the ills of the world. And so a changed or, in his words, “fundamentally transformed” America would (independent of all experience) put us on the path of curing the world. Thus, no exceptionalism. Thus, more capitulation to, rather than standing up to, tyrants. Thus, more statism and less individualism and free enterprise. Thus, more welfare. Thus, more government control and less individual rights.
And the result? We see it all around us, here and abroad. Even in this week’s headlines.
Lincoln said our Declaration, our Founding, provided a “maxim for free society, which could be familiar to all, and revered by all; constantly looked to, constantly labored for, and even though never perfectly attained, constantly approximated and thereby constantly spreading and deepening its influence, and augmenting the happiness and value of life to all people of all colors everywhere.”
A simple question: Is the government we have now, are the policies we have now, is the President we have now doing this? Does he understand it? Does he believe it? Or, in his ideological fixation, is his thinking so independent of all experience such that he cannot learn anything new? The question answers itself. And we see the answer all around us.
May 4, 2012
As Broadcast on Bill Bennett’s Morning in America
By Seth Leibsohn
A lifetime of welfare dependency. A capitulation to enemies that has come back to haunt us. A human rights fiasco. An economy with no promise. That is what we see this week from President Barack Obama both in his campaign for re-election and in his policies.
Let’s begin with a lifetime of welfare dependency. The Obama campaign unveiled a campaign slide show entitled “The Life of Julia” this week. I guess Barack Obama likes to make composites of women because here is another one, what he and his campaign view as the typical American woman. Here is how the slide show is introduced: “Take a look at how President Obama's policies help one woman over her lifetime—and how Mitt Romney would change her story.” Fine, we go to the first slide—don’t worry, I’ll go no further. We have baby Julia and the slide says “Under President Obama: Julia is enrolled in a Head Start program to help get her ready for school. Because of steps President Obama has taken to improve programs like this one, Julia joins thousands of students across the country who will start kindergarten ready to learn and succeed.” Then, it says “The Romney Ryan budget would cut Head Start,” etcetera, etcetera.
Let’s stop right there. Why does the Obama campaign begin and suppose we all will gel to, affiliate, and associate with, or be a child in need of Head Start? Head Start is a Great Society program for disadvantaged children—a several billion dollar program for, well, not-the-average American. At least not now. So why do we start with this person? Here’s why, to quote another keen observer of this: The President and his left-wing view of the world think of a woman and think “a woman can live her entire life by leaning on government intervention, dependency and other people's money rather than her own initiative or hard work.” They truly believe living off the government, by the government, and from the government is the best way to live. And of course a program like Head Start has tens of thousands of government employees, don’t forget that.
But what many don’t know is that Head Start is an abject failure. Study after study has shown its ineffectiveness and, sometimes even, harm. Here’s just one, as summarized by the Heritage Foundation: A scientifically rigorous evaluation called the 2010 Head Start Impact Study found the program “ineffective at providing a boost to children while in kindergarten and the first grade,” the years Head Start is geared toward. Just a little more:
For the four-year-old group, access to the program failed to raise the cognitive abilities of Head Start participants on 41 measures compared to similarly situated children who were not allowed access to Head Start. Specifically, the language skills, literacy, math skills, and school performance of the participating children failed to improve.
Alarmingly, access to Head Start for the three-year-old group actually had a harmful effect on the teacher-assessed math ability of these children once they entered kindergarten. Teachers reported that non-participating children were more prepared in math skills than those children who participated in Head Start. Head Start failed to have an impact on the 40 other measures.
The Heritage analysis concludes if there’s one anti-poverty education program that should be cut, it’s Head Start. But the left presupposes American women in it. Why? Margaret Thatcher put her finger on this kind of thinking, this ideology (a word we will come back to), if you will. She said this kind of welfare state thinking is the “debilitating concept of the all-powerful state which takes too much from you to do too much for you, constantly substituting the politicians' view of what the people should have for the people's own view of what they want.”
Is Head Start something we should want? A billions dollar program that doesn’t work but does make a discipline of government dependence and government employment? According to the Obama team, the answer is yes.
Another headline: “Russia's top military officer has threatened to carry out a pre-emptive strike on U.S.-led NATO missile defense facilities in Eastern Europe if Washington goes ahead with its controversial plan to build a missile shield.” This is the very shield President Obama is now proposing because he thought dismantling the Missile Defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic, which he did, would satisfy the Russians. That, obviously, was not the case. President Obama upset and weakened our allies in Poland and the Czech Republic, we now see, for no benefit at all. And in appeasing the Russians then, by throwing our allies overboard, we showed no strength or resolve to the Russians so they can today feel free to cavalierly threaten pre-emptive strikes against us again—as if this were 1961 all over again.
And, this week, we also have another human rights fiasco. The New York Times headline today “Dissident’s Plea for Protection From China Deepens Crisis.” CNN puts it this way: “Chen case is another human rights issue for Obama.” Staying with CNN a moment, here is how their story opens:
Iran, Syria and now China. President Barack Obama faces a third front of vulnerability on his administration's record of defending human rights with the muddled situation involving activist Chen Guangcheng.
With his re-election campaign just hitting full stride, Obama hoped to capitalize on foreign policy successes such as last year's raid that killed Osama bin Laden to blunt Republican attacks on the sluggish U.S. economic recovery.
When CNN says you have a muddled situation, a sluggish economy, and points out that you are using the killing of bin Laden as a political ploy, all in two sentences, you have a problem. CNN could have gone on to add Sudan and so many other places—do people even know that Islamist Northern Sudan is bombing the South of Sudan again? We’ll leave that for another day so surfeited are we just now with Iran, Syria, Egypt, China, Russia, Venezuela, and other places that have become both more dangerous to us on President Obama’s watch and less solvable due to President Obama’s policies and ideology.
It should actually be no surprise that we have muddled the human rights case of a Chinese dissident and human rights lawyer. This administration has shown from year one it doesn’t know what human rights abuses are. It was Obama’s very own Assistant Secretary of State Michael Posner who told Chinese officials two years ago during a human rights summit that our two countries both have work to do. The AP reported that in discussing human rights with China, Posner “raised on his own” Arizona’s anti-illegal immigration law as part of our own dark record. Yes: the very law the Supreme Court, and even its liberals, seem to be in support of. As Arizona is to illegal immigrants, China is to killing of millions of citizens. It’s all the same moral plane according to this administration.
Just as the Mullahs in Iran were on the same moral plane as the citizens of Iran when President Obama sent a new year’s message to the leaders and citizens of Iran in the same message, saying our two countries both had the same hopes and dreams—the problem was one country’s rulers shoots people in the streets and the other’s does not, and the dissidents in the first country heard from the leader of the second only support for those who were doing the shooting, totally ignoring (and killing off) their pleas for help.
When you do not understand human rights you do not know how to work for them. Ideology is what is behind this, it’s an ideology that cares more about diplomacy and negotiations for the sake of diplomacy and negotiations over the actual God-given rights of people and human beings. It’s what somebody smart once said of the UN: The UN cares about lines and maps, it doesn’t care about people. And that’s the same exact ideology that makes a compulsion, a talisman, of government programs whether they work for people, for human beings, or whether they fail them.
It’s an ideology, at center, that puts the state above the person.
And it is that ideology that is the exact opposite of our Founding where the state was to be the servant of the person because the person, the human, was given rights by God and created the state, not the other way around where the state created the person and made the person subservient to it. Remember the words: “to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”
When you understand our Founding and the appropriate human relationship to government, you understand human rights. When you do not understand our Founding, you cannot understand human rights because the state, in that case, not the person, is the entity of preferred status and your mission is to protect and defend the state, not the individual or the human.
It is this same ideology that is driving our economic stagnation. Here’s all I need to know about this, because it’s the example that reveals both President Obama’s view of America at the same time it reveals his view about economics. When he was in France three years ago and asked whether he believed in American exceptionalism he said “I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.” Two socialist economies, one a complete basket case based on out-of-control, cradle-to-grave spending where the state takes too much from you in order to do too much for you. When asked about American greatness, his mind went to a comparison with Greece.
So today, as a result of no reduction in spending and no plan to inspire growth and prosperity, we will get a jobs report whose numbers will not decrease the unemployment rate. And, thus, we will hear pleas for more spending and even more taxes, and we will hear nothing about how to inspire, energize, and promote small business or private sector growth.
Why is this all of a piece with a blinding ideology? Bill Bennett likes to quote the philosopher Hanna Arendt as saying there is nothing so blinding as ideology. He’s right to do so. Arendt wrote more on this in her book on Totalitarianism, saying “all ideologies contain totalitarian elements.” Why do they? She gave several reasons, the most important, she wrote, was “ideological thinking becomes independent of all experience from which it cannot learn anything new.”
And that is President Obama. An ideologue who sees states and statism, governments and governmental programs, not humans and not individuals and not humans and individuals who can operate free of the state but must instead be cared for by it. He was trained in this school of thought, a school of thought that taught America (and thus America’s Founding) was responsible for the ills of the world. And so a changed or, in his words, “fundamentally transformed” America would (independent of all experience) put us on the path of curing the world. Thus, no exceptionalism. Thus, more capitulation to, rather than standing up to, tyrants. Thus, more statism and less individualism and free enterprise. Thus, more welfare. Thus, more government control and less individual rights.
And the result? We see it all around us, here and abroad. Even in this week’s headlines.
Lincoln said our Declaration, our Founding, provided a “maxim for free society, which could be familiar to all, and revered by all; constantly looked to, constantly labored for, and even though never perfectly attained, constantly approximated and thereby constantly spreading and deepening its influence, and augmenting the happiness and value of life to all people of all colors everywhere.”
A simple question: Is the government we have now, are the policies we have now, is the President we have now doing this? Does he understand it? Does he believe it? Or, in his ideological fixation, is his thinking so independent of all experience such that he cannot learn anything new? The question answers itself. And we see the answer all around us.
Sunday, April 29, 2012
Seth Leibson 04-27-2012
Time To Wake Up
April 27, 2012
As Broadcast on Bill Bennett’s Morning in America
By Seth Leibsohn
Dwight Lyman Moody put it this way: “The best way to show that a stick is crooked is not to argue about it or to spend time denouncing it, but to lay a straight stick alongside it.” I’ve always liked that quote, and I think it’s an excellent instruction in how to comport ones’ self on a daily basis—in character, integrity, and in facing adversity. But I’ve been thinking about that quote all week as I’ve been thinking about our politics, our presidential campaign, and our country. Because, at the end of the analysis of this administration’s past three and a half years, I’m worried that a contrast in character of the candidates is simply not enough, not in politics, not in the politics we have to contend with today.
And yet, denouncing and arguing hasn’t worked either; at least not the way we’ve been doing it, and not thus far. The RealClearPolitics average of polls right now has Obama up over Romney, by nearly four points. That tells me this is a close election. And everything can get shaken up—Carter was trouncing Reagan at various times throughout 1979 and 1980, too.
But there’s something different going on this time. In this election, race will be invoked—we already see that. Religion will be invoked—we already see that. Economic divisiveness will be invoked—we already see that. And we can never expect that the mainstream media will give our side a fair shake. We have a lot of work cut out for ourselves. Perhaps a lot more than usual.
So I’m thinking it may be time to start turning the language of Barack Obama around, taking it upon ourselves, and appealing to the fundamental decency of our fellow citizens. President Obama likes to talk about fairness. A lot. And so, too, should we.
I’d like to start with some questions on first responsibilities. The Constitution says we wrote our Constitution—and wrote our nation into existence—to, among other things (and just a few other things at that), “Provide for the common defence” and “to secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.” And so, John Jay, wrote in the Third Federalist Paper: “Among the many objects to which a wise and free people find it necessary to direct their attention, that of providing for their SAFETY seems to be the first.” And he defined “SAFETY” this way: “as it respects security for the preservation of peace and tranquility, as well as against dangers from FOREIGN ARMS AND INFLUENCE, as from dangers of the LIKE KIND arising from domestic causes.”
So, a few questions: Is it fair to the American people, is it fair to our allies, is it fair to our military (and please keep in mind how much both parties like to speak about how much they care about our soldiers) that President Obama has put forth plans to cut our military? Is it fair that he wants to cut it so much we will only be able to fight in one land war at a time? Is it fair to our military that he is also cutting the salaries, health care and retirement benefits of our current military?
Is it fair to our allies that he stripped them of Missile Defense, in order to appease Russia? And has Russia done anything for us in return? Was it fair to the American people that President Obama signed a treaty with Russia that gave Russia a veto over American missile defenses?
How about other friends: Was it fair that President Obama bowed to China in refusing to meet with the Dalai Lama—his fellow Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, for goodness sakes? In fact, let’s quote the Dalai Lama, because he says something else that I’ve always liked and contemplate a lot: “Our chief purpose in this life is to help other people. And if you can't help them, at least don't hurt them.” Is that the Obama record?
Let us continue: Is it fair to the American people, has it helped them or has it actually hurt them, that President Obama killed off the jobs creating and energy producing XL Pipeline from Canada? And that his administration is responsible for “canceled leases on federal lands in Utah,” “suspended leases in Montana,” “delayed leases in Colorado and Utah, and canceled lease sales off the Virginia coast,” according to Investors Business Daily? Is it fair to the American people, has it helped them or has it actually hurt them, that his canceling of domestic energy efforts and slow walking of permits has taken place as the price of gasoline has gone up at the same time, from $1.83 a gallon to almost four dollars a gallon?
Is it fair to the American people, has it helped them or has it actually hurt them, that unemployment has gone up under his presidency and we’ve had the longest streak of over eight percent unemployment since the Great Depression? But the real unemployment rate, to quote Jim Pethokoukis, isn’t even close to eight percent: if you include “the discouraged plus part-timers who wish they had full time work. That unemployment rate, perhaps the truest measure of the labor market’s health, is a sky-high 14.9%.” Is that fair to the American people, has it helped them or has it actually hurt them? relic
Is it fair to the American people, has it helped them or has it actually hurt them, that this administration has increased the national debt five trillion dollars? Is it fair to the American people, has it helped them or has it actually hurt them, that President Obama has not submitted a budget with less than one trillion dollars in deficit spending even as he promised to cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term?
I’ve not even spoken of what I think will be the twin foreign policy relics of his presidency: Egypt and Iran. Is it fair to the American people, has it helped them or has it actually hurt them; was it fair to the Egyptian people, has it helped them or has it actually hurt them; was it fair to the Israelis, has it helped them or has it actually hurt them that President Obama assisted in ushering out our ally Hosni Mubarak in Egypt only to create a situation where the Muslim Brotherhood would take over that country? A take over, by the way, that has turned the Sinai into a terror zone and that just this week witnessed the canceling (by Egypt) of natural gas supplies to Israel.
Was it fair to the American people, has it helped them or has it actually hurt them, that when a radical Islamic nation at war with us for over thirty years and attempting to acquire nuclear weapons had its own revolution in the streets, a revolution poised to topple that nation, this President said we would not meddle—ensuring the safety and sanctity of the radical Islamic regime? I’m of course speaking of Iran. Was it fair to the Iranian people, did it help them or did it actually hurt them that President Obama said we would not meddle, even as protestors in the streets were asking “Where’s Obama?”
Now, let us go to the news of this week: Has it been fair to the American people, has it helped them or has it actually hurt them, that he not only criticized Arizona for trying to tamp down on illegal immigration with a law that mirrored the federal law but then went on to sue the state and encourage boycotts? Has it been fair to the American people, has it helped them or has it actually hurt them, that he allowed the Mexican president—standing by his side—to condemn Arizona? Has it been fair to the American people, has it helped them or has it actually hurt them, that he has allowed his State Department officials to compare Arizona’s illegal immigration law to the Chinese as being on par with China’s human rights abuses?
By the way: If you want what we were told was one of the best defenses of Arizona, see the op-ed Bill and I did in 2010 for National Review. It’s linked here and at BillBennett.com
On the domestic tranquility and common defense front, just one last question: Is it fair to the American people, will it help them or will it actually hurt them, to take the posture, as was done this week, that the war on terror is over? Here’s the story from the non-partisan, the exquisitely non-partisan, National Journal: “The Obama administration is taking a new view of Islamist radicalism. The president realizes he has no choice but to cultivate the Muslim Brotherhood and other relatively "moderate" Islamist groups emerging as lead political players out of the Arab Spring in Egypt, Tunisia and elsewhere.” Thus, “The war on terror is over,” according to the State Department.
So finally, is it fair to the American people, will it help them or will it actually hurt them, to believe there is no choice but to cultivate the Muslim Brotherhood and call Islamist groups “moderate?” By the way, the official motto of the Muslim Brotherhood, as we cannot tire of stating: “Allah is our objective; the Prophet is our leader; the Quran is our law; Jihad is our way; dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.” And Hamas—on our State Department’s list of terrorist organizations, the group that trains children in martyrdom in camp, school, and on television—is a self-identified Muslim Brotherhood organization.
Fairness to America and her friends. Helpful to America and her friends. Hurtful to American and her friends. Just what is the straight stick and what, at long last, is the crooked one? And just what will it mean to ratify this history? That, perhaps, is the most crucial question of all.
April 27, 2012
As Broadcast on Bill Bennett’s Morning in America
By Seth Leibsohn
Dwight Lyman Moody put it this way: “The best way to show that a stick is crooked is not to argue about it or to spend time denouncing it, but to lay a straight stick alongside it.” I’ve always liked that quote, and I think it’s an excellent instruction in how to comport ones’ self on a daily basis—in character, integrity, and in facing adversity. But I’ve been thinking about that quote all week as I’ve been thinking about our politics, our presidential campaign, and our country. Because, at the end of the analysis of this administration’s past three and a half years, I’m worried that a contrast in character of the candidates is simply not enough, not in politics, not in the politics we have to contend with today.
And yet, denouncing and arguing hasn’t worked either; at least not the way we’ve been doing it, and not thus far. The RealClearPolitics average of polls right now has Obama up over Romney, by nearly four points. That tells me this is a close election. And everything can get shaken up—Carter was trouncing Reagan at various times throughout 1979 and 1980, too.
But there’s something different going on this time. In this election, race will be invoked—we already see that. Religion will be invoked—we already see that. Economic divisiveness will be invoked—we already see that. And we can never expect that the mainstream media will give our side a fair shake. We have a lot of work cut out for ourselves. Perhaps a lot more than usual.
So I’m thinking it may be time to start turning the language of Barack Obama around, taking it upon ourselves, and appealing to the fundamental decency of our fellow citizens. President Obama likes to talk about fairness. A lot. And so, too, should we.
I’d like to start with some questions on first responsibilities. The Constitution says we wrote our Constitution—and wrote our nation into existence—to, among other things (and just a few other things at that), “Provide for the common defence” and “to secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.” And so, John Jay, wrote in the Third Federalist Paper: “Among the many objects to which a wise and free people find it necessary to direct their attention, that of providing for their SAFETY seems to be the first.” And he defined “SAFETY” this way: “as it respects security for the preservation of peace and tranquility, as well as against dangers from FOREIGN ARMS AND INFLUENCE, as from dangers of the LIKE KIND arising from domestic causes.”
So, a few questions: Is it fair to the American people, is it fair to our allies, is it fair to our military (and please keep in mind how much both parties like to speak about how much they care about our soldiers) that President Obama has put forth plans to cut our military? Is it fair that he wants to cut it so much we will only be able to fight in one land war at a time? Is it fair to our military that he is also cutting the salaries, health care and retirement benefits of our current military?
Is it fair to our allies that he stripped them of Missile Defense, in order to appease Russia? And has Russia done anything for us in return? Was it fair to the American people that President Obama signed a treaty with Russia that gave Russia a veto over American missile defenses?
How about other friends: Was it fair that President Obama bowed to China in refusing to meet with the Dalai Lama—his fellow Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, for goodness sakes? In fact, let’s quote the Dalai Lama, because he says something else that I’ve always liked and contemplate a lot: “Our chief purpose in this life is to help other people. And if you can't help them, at least don't hurt them.” Is that the Obama record?
Let us continue: Is it fair to the American people, has it helped them or has it actually hurt them, that President Obama killed off the jobs creating and energy producing XL Pipeline from Canada? And that his administration is responsible for “canceled leases on federal lands in Utah,” “suspended leases in Montana,” “delayed leases in Colorado and Utah, and canceled lease sales off the Virginia coast,” according to Investors Business Daily? Is it fair to the American people, has it helped them or has it actually hurt them, that his canceling of domestic energy efforts and slow walking of permits has taken place as the price of gasoline has gone up at the same time, from $1.83 a gallon to almost four dollars a gallon?
Is it fair to the American people, has it helped them or has it actually hurt them, that unemployment has gone up under his presidency and we’ve had the longest streak of over eight percent unemployment since the Great Depression? But the real unemployment rate, to quote Jim Pethokoukis, isn’t even close to eight percent: if you include “the discouraged plus part-timers who wish they had full time work. That unemployment rate, perhaps the truest measure of the labor market’s health, is a sky-high 14.9%.” Is that fair to the American people, has it helped them or has it actually hurt them? relic
Is it fair to the American people, has it helped them or has it actually hurt them, that this administration has increased the national debt five trillion dollars? Is it fair to the American people, has it helped them or has it actually hurt them, that President Obama has not submitted a budget with less than one trillion dollars in deficit spending even as he promised to cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term?
I’ve not even spoken of what I think will be the twin foreign policy relics of his presidency: Egypt and Iran. Is it fair to the American people, has it helped them or has it actually hurt them; was it fair to the Egyptian people, has it helped them or has it actually hurt them; was it fair to the Israelis, has it helped them or has it actually hurt them that President Obama assisted in ushering out our ally Hosni Mubarak in Egypt only to create a situation where the Muslim Brotherhood would take over that country? A take over, by the way, that has turned the Sinai into a terror zone and that just this week witnessed the canceling (by Egypt) of natural gas supplies to Israel.
Was it fair to the American people, has it helped them or has it actually hurt them, that when a radical Islamic nation at war with us for over thirty years and attempting to acquire nuclear weapons had its own revolution in the streets, a revolution poised to topple that nation, this President said we would not meddle—ensuring the safety and sanctity of the radical Islamic regime? I’m of course speaking of Iran. Was it fair to the Iranian people, did it help them or did it actually hurt them that President Obama said we would not meddle, even as protestors in the streets were asking “Where’s Obama?”
Now, let us go to the news of this week: Has it been fair to the American people, has it helped them or has it actually hurt them, that he not only criticized Arizona for trying to tamp down on illegal immigration with a law that mirrored the federal law but then went on to sue the state and encourage boycotts? Has it been fair to the American people, has it helped them or has it actually hurt them, that he allowed the Mexican president—standing by his side—to condemn Arizona? Has it been fair to the American people, has it helped them or has it actually hurt them, that he has allowed his State Department officials to compare Arizona’s illegal immigration law to the Chinese as being on par with China’s human rights abuses?
By the way: If you want what we were told was one of the best defenses of Arizona, see the op-ed Bill and I did in 2010 for National Review. It’s linked here and at BillBennett.com
On the domestic tranquility and common defense front, just one last question: Is it fair to the American people, will it help them or will it actually hurt them, to take the posture, as was done this week, that the war on terror is over? Here’s the story from the non-partisan, the exquisitely non-partisan, National Journal: “The Obama administration is taking a new view of Islamist radicalism. The president realizes he has no choice but to cultivate the Muslim Brotherhood and other relatively "moderate" Islamist groups emerging as lead political players out of the Arab Spring in Egypt, Tunisia and elsewhere.” Thus, “The war on terror is over,” according to the State Department.
So finally, is it fair to the American people, will it help them or will it actually hurt them, to believe there is no choice but to cultivate the Muslim Brotherhood and call Islamist groups “moderate?” By the way, the official motto of the Muslim Brotherhood, as we cannot tire of stating: “Allah is our objective; the Prophet is our leader; the Quran is our law; Jihad is our way; dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.” And Hamas—on our State Department’s list of terrorist organizations, the group that trains children in martyrdom in camp, school, and on television—is a self-identified Muslim Brotherhood organization.
Fairness to America and her friends. Helpful to America and her friends. Hurtful to American and her friends. Just what is the straight stick and what, at long last, is the crooked one? And just what will it mean to ratify this history? That, perhaps, is the most crucial question of all.
Sunday, April 15, 2012
Seth Leibson 04-13-2012
April 13, 2012
As Broadcast on Bill Bennett’s Morning in America
By Seth Leibsohn
The headline from the Washington Post this morning: “Defiant North Korea fires long-range rocket.” Now, thank heavens, this rocket failed. But the question in front of us is what was the US prepared to do if this rocket was successful and, moreover, why did a new leader in North Korea think he could defy our agreement with his country and launch this rocket? Let me ask this question: We are going into another round of talks with Iran over their nuclear program this weekend. Why, this week, did Iran’s President blast the United States as “arrogant” and repeatedly say Iran would not give up its nuclear program? Why did he think he could do that? All those sanctions we’ve been told were working against both countries, sanctions matched with offers to talk and negotiate: they’ve led to what? Fear of us or pushing around of us?
Here is everything you need to know about sanctions against rogue nuclear states and soon-to-be rogue nuclear states: Two quotes from the Washington Post about North Korea: i) “The country is one of the most heavily sanctioned on earth” and ii) “’We have all the sanction authorities we need under existing U.N. resolutions and executive orders,’” said an Obama administration official, who was not authorized to speak on the record.”
So, the heaviest of sanctions with an admission that we don’t need more stopped North Korea not at all, and puts the fear into the Mullocracy of Iran not at all. Meanwhile, we get lied to. Here is Secretary of State Clinton on the upcoming talks with Iran: “We are receiving signals that (the Iranians) are bringing ideas to the table.” What signals? What ideas? Does she read the speeches of the Iranian President? And what is Iran beyond its bragging? It is a nation at war with us. As Steve Hayes put it in today’s Wall Street Journal: “Tehran has provided weapons to insurgents directly responsible for killing hundreds of American troops…It has funded, trained and equipped jihadists—Sunnis and Shiites alike—targeting American forces and interests in the Middle East and beyond. And all along the way it has provided safe haven and support to al Qaeda leaders and those closest to them.” So to this country we talk; we negotiate; and speak about high hopes.
And, if North Korea and Iran were not quite enough for us, let me give you Latin America. Here’s the latest from Gallup: “U.S. President Barack Obama's job approval rating in Latin America is at a new low ahead of the Sixth Summit of the Americas taking place in Cartagena, Colombia, this week….Many Latin Americans have lost faith in Obama's ability to strengthen ties between Latin America and the U.S.”
Remember when Walter Mondale asked Gary Hart “Where’s the beef?” One simple question for President Obama on the world stage, on his efforts to reset our foreign relations: “Where’s the success?” There is none. There is failure. There is weakness. There is danger. Remember when Jeane Kirkpatrick said she was tired of the US getting kicked around? Remember how she and Ronald Reagan changed that? Well we are getting kicked around again. And it’s more dangerous now than it was back then.
This is what is happening abroad—and, to us. Meanwhile, while those fires go on, here is what the President is doing at home—and it is very obviously his campaign theme. It’s the theme he thinks will take down and take out Mitt Romney. We cannot let him get away with it. The President is now going back to arguing for the Buffett rule, the idea that if you earn more than one million dollars a year you need to pay more taxes. He’s so proud of this point, his speech about it on Wednesday is on the White House Website—and in that speech, not for the first time, he says this:
I’m not the first President to call for this idea that everybody has got to do their fair share. Some years ago, one of my predecessors traveled across the country pushing for the same concept. He gave a speech where he talked about a letter he had received from a wealthy executive who paid lower tax rates than his secretary, and wanted to come to Washington and tell Congress why that was wrong. So this President gave another speech where he said it was “crazy” -- that's a quote -- that certain tax loopholes make it possible for multimillionaires to pay nothing, while a bus driver was paying 10 percent of his salary. That wild-eyed, socialist, tax-hiking class warrior was Ronald Reagan.
President Obama went on to say we might as well call this tax on people earning more than one million dollars the “Reagan rule.”
Now this will have cache in this election if and only if one condition is met: If we are intellectually lazy. My plea is we not be lazy. Pericles said the secret of democracy is courage, but I think we need to update that and recognize that the secret of democracy is industry, diligence, and dedication—whatever the opposite of lazy is.
So let’s get to it. Barack Obama is taking Reagan so far out of context Reagan would not recognize how he’s being quoted. The speech Reagan gave that Obama is quoting from was at a school in 1985. And here’s how it went. First, Reagan spoke of the economic recovery we were then enjoying. And how did we get there? Here is what Reagan said in that speech: “Hope has returned, and America's working again. Now, you know how all this came about, how we cut tax rates and trimmed Federal spending and got interest rates down. But what's really important is what inspired us to do these things. What's really important is the philosophy that guided us. The whole thing could be boiled down to a few words—freedom, freedom, and more freedom. It's a philosophy that isn't limited to guiding government policy. It's a philosophy you can live by; in fact, I hope you do.”
You simply do not hear Barack Obama talking like that—and you most certainly do not hear him pleading for or celebrating cuts in the tax rates—yes, including cutting the millionaires’ taxes; Reagan cut them 20 percent by the time of his speech 1985 and would cut them again another 22 percent.
So yes, in the summer of 1985 Reagan was pushing his new tax legislation. But here’s what his legislation called for—the diligent can look it up; I already did. Yes, closing some tax code loopholes, but if you go back and read what loopholes, they were mostly for entertainment deductions. Again and again the “three martini lunch” is what the White House said it was talking about and what the press kept talking about. Entertainment expenses.
How about the rest of Reagan’s tax plan that year? As I mentioned, he had lowered marginal tax rates from 70 percent to 50 percent and in 1985 he went on a campaign to lower them again, to 35 percent and would ultimately get them to 28 percent. So when Obama says, as he did this week, that Reagan wanted to raise taxes on millionaires that is not what Reagan was pushing for, Reagan was pushing for lowering them, and in that year he was arguing to lower them to today’s very rate (35 percent) that Obama wants to hike!
Now, let’s look at what else Reagan said in that high school speech. Let me quote: “We want the part of your check that shows Federal withholding to have fewer digits on it. And we want the part that shows your salary to have more digits on it. We're trying to take less money from you and less from your parents.”
He also said there “When taxes are lowered, economic growth follows. And economic growth is good for just about everyone, especially the poor.” That’s what Ronald Reagan’s theme was at that speech.
Reagan’s speech and his plan was about scaling down taxes and scaling down the IRS. That’s not what Obama’s plan is—it’s the very opposite. Hold on that thought a moment, because I’m not done with Reagan. The very day before his speech that Obama quotes, here’s what Reagan said about his tax plan in 1985, quote: “Some people have labored so long to make government bigger, they've developed a knee-jerk addiction to tax increases," Reagan said. "And every time their knee jerks, we get kicked.” You don’t hear Obama quote that justification for what Reagan was arguing for in 1985. And for good reason: he believes the exact opposite.
So let us disabuse ourselves of this notion that the Buffett rule would receive any warrant, never mind initiation, from Ronald Reagan. And let us disabuse ourselves from the notion that the Buffett rule means anything substantial beyond crude class electioneering. If implemented, it would raise revenues by five billion dollars—eight times less than Warren Buffett’s entire net worth. If Warren Buffett wants to implement his Buffett rule, nobody is stopping him and he could do it for the whole country in one fell swoop if he thinks it such a good idea, and he’d still be worth 35 billion dollars after doing so.
The point is this: the Gateses and the Zuckerbergs and the Dells, just like the Carnegies and the Mellons and the Vanderbilts before them, have noting to be guilty about: they make wealth and they create wealth. They made wealth and they created wealth.
I close with what Abraham Lincoln said about wealth creation: “Property is the fruit of labor...property is desirable...is a positive good in the world. That some should be rich shows that others may become rich, and hence is just encouragement to industry and enterprise. Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another; but let him labor diligently and build one for himself.” That is how you talk about fairness. No, that is how you create fairness. And wealth. And prosperity. And growth. Not with the political theater of the absurd we’ve been treated to this week and will be treated with for weeks to come.
Let’s get on with this election—and let us do it with one goal in mind: Holding this President accountable. Accountable for the increased debt; the irresponsible, deficit-laden budgets; increased unemployment; increased weakness on the world stage; increased danger to our own country; but mostly, at the end of the day, mostly let us hold him accountable for treating us as if we were stupid by continuing to offer us theater and absurd theater at that. Accountability—that’s the other secret of this democracy.
As Broadcast on Bill Bennett’s Morning in America
By Seth Leibsohn
The headline from the Washington Post this morning: “Defiant North Korea fires long-range rocket.” Now, thank heavens, this rocket failed. But the question in front of us is what was the US prepared to do if this rocket was successful and, moreover, why did a new leader in North Korea think he could defy our agreement with his country and launch this rocket? Let me ask this question: We are going into another round of talks with Iran over their nuclear program this weekend. Why, this week, did Iran’s President blast the United States as “arrogant” and repeatedly say Iran would not give up its nuclear program? Why did he think he could do that? All those sanctions we’ve been told were working against both countries, sanctions matched with offers to talk and negotiate: they’ve led to what? Fear of us or pushing around of us?
Here is everything you need to know about sanctions against rogue nuclear states and soon-to-be rogue nuclear states: Two quotes from the Washington Post about North Korea: i) “The country is one of the most heavily sanctioned on earth” and ii) “’We have all the sanction authorities we need under existing U.N. resolutions and executive orders,’” said an Obama administration official, who was not authorized to speak on the record.”
So, the heaviest of sanctions with an admission that we don’t need more stopped North Korea not at all, and puts the fear into the Mullocracy of Iran not at all. Meanwhile, we get lied to. Here is Secretary of State Clinton on the upcoming talks with Iran: “We are receiving signals that (the Iranians) are bringing ideas to the table.” What signals? What ideas? Does she read the speeches of the Iranian President? And what is Iran beyond its bragging? It is a nation at war with us. As Steve Hayes put it in today’s Wall Street Journal: “Tehran has provided weapons to insurgents directly responsible for killing hundreds of American troops…It has funded, trained and equipped jihadists—Sunnis and Shiites alike—targeting American forces and interests in the Middle East and beyond. And all along the way it has provided safe haven and support to al Qaeda leaders and those closest to them.” So to this country we talk; we negotiate; and speak about high hopes.
And, if North Korea and Iran were not quite enough for us, let me give you Latin America. Here’s the latest from Gallup: “U.S. President Barack Obama's job approval rating in Latin America is at a new low ahead of the Sixth Summit of the Americas taking place in Cartagena, Colombia, this week….Many Latin Americans have lost faith in Obama's ability to strengthen ties between Latin America and the U.S.”
Remember when Walter Mondale asked Gary Hart “Where’s the beef?” One simple question for President Obama on the world stage, on his efforts to reset our foreign relations: “Where’s the success?” There is none. There is failure. There is weakness. There is danger. Remember when Jeane Kirkpatrick said she was tired of the US getting kicked around? Remember how she and Ronald Reagan changed that? Well we are getting kicked around again. And it’s more dangerous now than it was back then.
This is what is happening abroad—and, to us. Meanwhile, while those fires go on, here is what the President is doing at home—and it is very obviously his campaign theme. It’s the theme he thinks will take down and take out Mitt Romney. We cannot let him get away with it. The President is now going back to arguing for the Buffett rule, the idea that if you earn more than one million dollars a year you need to pay more taxes. He’s so proud of this point, his speech about it on Wednesday is on the White House Website—and in that speech, not for the first time, he says this:
I’m not the first President to call for this idea that everybody has got to do their fair share. Some years ago, one of my predecessors traveled across the country pushing for the same concept. He gave a speech where he talked about a letter he had received from a wealthy executive who paid lower tax rates than his secretary, and wanted to come to Washington and tell Congress why that was wrong. So this President gave another speech where he said it was “crazy” -- that's a quote -- that certain tax loopholes make it possible for multimillionaires to pay nothing, while a bus driver was paying 10 percent of his salary. That wild-eyed, socialist, tax-hiking class warrior was Ronald Reagan.
President Obama went on to say we might as well call this tax on people earning more than one million dollars the “Reagan rule.”
Now this will have cache in this election if and only if one condition is met: If we are intellectually lazy. My plea is we not be lazy. Pericles said the secret of democracy is courage, but I think we need to update that and recognize that the secret of democracy is industry, diligence, and dedication—whatever the opposite of lazy is.
So let’s get to it. Barack Obama is taking Reagan so far out of context Reagan would not recognize how he’s being quoted. The speech Reagan gave that Obama is quoting from was at a school in 1985. And here’s how it went. First, Reagan spoke of the economic recovery we were then enjoying. And how did we get there? Here is what Reagan said in that speech: “Hope has returned, and America's working again. Now, you know how all this came about, how we cut tax rates and trimmed Federal spending and got interest rates down. But what's really important is what inspired us to do these things. What's really important is the philosophy that guided us. The whole thing could be boiled down to a few words—freedom, freedom, and more freedom. It's a philosophy that isn't limited to guiding government policy. It's a philosophy you can live by; in fact, I hope you do.”
You simply do not hear Barack Obama talking like that—and you most certainly do not hear him pleading for or celebrating cuts in the tax rates—yes, including cutting the millionaires’ taxes; Reagan cut them 20 percent by the time of his speech 1985 and would cut them again another 22 percent.
So yes, in the summer of 1985 Reagan was pushing his new tax legislation. But here’s what his legislation called for—the diligent can look it up; I already did. Yes, closing some tax code loopholes, but if you go back and read what loopholes, they were mostly for entertainment deductions. Again and again the “three martini lunch” is what the White House said it was talking about and what the press kept talking about. Entertainment expenses.
How about the rest of Reagan’s tax plan that year? As I mentioned, he had lowered marginal tax rates from 70 percent to 50 percent and in 1985 he went on a campaign to lower them again, to 35 percent and would ultimately get them to 28 percent. So when Obama says, as he did this week, that Reagan wanted to raise taxes on millionaires that is not what Reagan was pushing for, Reagan was pushing for lowering them, and in that year he was arguing to lower them to today’s very rate (35 percent) that Obama wants to hike!
Now, let’s look at what else Reagan said in that high school speech. Let me quote: “We want the part of your check that shows Federal withholding to have fewer digits on it. And we want the part that shows your salary to have more digits on it. We're trying to take less money from you and less from your parents.”
He also said there “When taxes are lowered, economic growth follows. And economic growth is good for just about everyone, especially the poor.” That’s what Ronald Reagan’s theme was at that speech.
Reagan’s speech and his plan was about scaling down taxes and scaling down the IRS. That’s not what Obama’s plan is—it’s the very opposite. Hold on that thought a moment, because I’m not done with Reagan. The very day before his speech that Obama quotes, here’s what Reagan said about his tax plan in 1985, quote: “Some people have labored so long to make government bigger, they've developed a knee-jerk addiction to tax increases," Reagan said. "And every time their knee jerks, we get kicked.” You don’t hear Obama quote that justification for what Reagan was arguing for in 1985. And for good reason: he believes the exact opposite.
So let us disabuse ourselves of this notion that the Buffett rule would receive any warrant, never mind initiation, from Ronald Reagan. And let us disabuse ourselves from the notion that the Buffett rule means anything substantial beyond crude class electioneering. If implemented, it would raise revenues by five billion dollars—eight times less than Warren Buffett’s entire net worth. If Warren Buffett wants to implement his Buffett rule, nobody is stopping him and he could do it for the whole country in one fell swoop if he thinks it such a good idea, and he’d still be worth 35 billion dollars after doing so.
The point is this: the Gateses and the Zuckerbergs and the Dells, just like the Carnegies and the Mellons and the Vanderbilts before them, have noting to be guilty about: they make wealth and they create wealth. They made wealth and they created wealth.
I close with what Abraham Lincoln said about wealth creation: “Property is the fruit of labor...property is desirable...is a positive good in the world. That some should be rich shows that others may become rich, and hence is just encouragement to industry and enterprise. Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another; but let him labor diligently and build one for himself.” That is how you talk about fairness. No, that is how you create fairness. And wealth. And prosperity. And growth. Not with the political theater of the absurd we’ve been treated to this week and will be treated with for weeks to come.
Let’s get on with this election—and let us do it with one goal in mind: Holding this President accountable. Accountable for the increased debt; the irresponsible, deficit-laden budgets; increased unemployment; increased weakness on the world stage; increased danger to our own country; but mostly, at the end of the day, mostly let us hold him accountable for treating us as if we were stupid by continuing to offer us theater and absurd theater at that. Accountability—that’s the other secret of this democracy.
Thursday, April 12, 2012
Seth Leibson 04-06-2012
April 6, 2012
By Seth Leibsohn
Good morning. It’s Friday, April 6, 2012. For our Jewish brethren tonight it’s Passover, a story of redemption, of fleeing slavery and entering freedom. For our Christian brethren it is Good Friday, the day Jesus was crucified. As I’ve heard any number of pastors say over the years, “I don’t know why we call it ‘good’ Friday.” But the reason, and the story, for both, is about redemption and freedom. It is also the day Abraham Lincoln—the man our school children used to be taught was the man who freed the slaves—it is the day he was shot. Lincoln of course died the day before Easter— the Christian story of hope and redemption. Given all that Lincoln stood for, and the unique timing of his death, the great political science professor Clinton Rossiter wrote of him that he was the “Christ-martyr of America’s democratic passion play.” What a phrase.
The Jews, Ruth Wisse has said, needed a desert experience to obtain their freedom—and they crossed the Sinai to begin that journey. Similarly, Christians have a risen Christ to take on the sins of the world and show the way of forgiveness and peace. It is with some sadness, then, that I have to report on a few contemporary events that also put me in the mind of all this. One man who helped preach and teach the story of the redemption through Christ and has helped show the way of reform for thousands of prisoners is Chuck Colson. Every Easter he would go to a prison and preach. Not this Sunday—he is unwell and in need of our prayers. Few have done as much for prison and prisoner reform as Chuck Colson. As Joe Loconte wrote of him: “His work among inmates earned him the 1993 Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion, placing him in the ranks of Billy Graham, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, and Mother Teresa.”
You see, Colson took a different view of crime, prisoners, and humanity: He believes the taproot of crime is sin and until people deal with that, they will not deal with their temporal guilt or habit of recidivism—and thus it is no accident that the prisons where Colson has operated have much lower recidivism rates than those that do not. Chuck Colson has done more for prison and criminal justice reform than any 20 or 40 departments of criminal justice in America. Our prayers are with him.
And, globally, our prayers must be with Israel right now, as well. The Sinai—which, let us remind, Israel returned to Egypt in a “land-for-peace” swap in 1979—is now “a terror zone,” according to the Israeli Prime Minister and as evidenced by the latest rocket attack on Israel, i.e., yesterday. By the way, one important fact here: When people say Israel must return the lands it took in the 1967 war against Israel: Israel has returned more the 90 percent of that land, it’s called the Sinai. And it is now a terror zone.
Israel has never been in more danger than it is right now—and not just because of the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and not just because of Yasser Arafat’s Fatah running of the West Bank, and not just because of Hamas’ running of the Gaza (land from 1967, by the way, Israel also returned “for peace”), and not just because Iran has threatened to remove Israel from the face of the earth as it tries to acquire nuclear weapons and funds both Hamas and Hezbollah. But, also, it must be said, because the United States has, by and under President Barack Obama, undermined Israel and, at the same time, emboldened her (and our) enemies.
Let us pause a moment on Egypt, which, along with Iran’s weapons program, will be President Obama’s foreign policy legacy. President Obama helped usher our ally Hosni Mubarak out of power. Mubarak kept the Muslim Brotherhood illegal in Egypt. The Brotherhood’s motto is: “Allah is our objective; the Prophet is our leader; the Quran is our law; Jihad is our way; dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.” Today, Mubarak is gone from power and the Brotherhood now controls the Parliament and has just fielded a candidate for President. Meantime, an even harder line Islamist is leading in the polls there, if he is not ultimately disqualified based on ancillary grounds having to do with his mother. We have turned an ally into an enemy—and it is the most populous Arab state in the world.
As we ask questions of our friends about President Obama, with what we call “intuitive empathy,” here is one: President Obama has weakened Israel and in fact strengthened her and our enemies: Why would he do that?
Perhaps, though, we need to set the predicate for this point. I contend there are few countries as culturally and politically aligned with the United States as Israel. Indeed, just to take one crude fact, in almost any given year, no country votes with the United States at the UN more than Israel—and not just on Middle East issues, but on every issue.
Now, back to President Obama and Israel: Just a few facts. Can you name me one other country our President has publicly lectured about its borders and what they need to be? President Obama did that to Israel last year. And if Israel actually heeded President Obama’s lecture, it would make Israel 9 miles wide at its most vulnerable point, half the width of the Washington Beltway. But let’s look at the longer record here, courtesy of Dan Senor in the Wall Street Journal:
President Obama, from day one of his administration, has been pressuring Israel to freeze settlement building—and putting such building of housing on par with Palestinian terrorism. Housing on the one hand; the slaughter of innocents on the other.
In October 2011, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta publically said Israel was “isolating itself” in world affairs.
By the way, Mr. Panetta's criticism was promptly endorsed by the Turkish Prime Minister, a harsh critic of Israel, who said Mr. Panetta was "correct in his assumptions." Indeed, almost every time the Obama administration has scolded Israel, the charges have been repeated by Turkish officials.
In November of last year, in advance of meeting with the Israeli Defense Minister, Mr. Panetta publicly previewed his message. He would warn Israel against a military strike on Iran's nuclear program: "There are going to be economic consequences . . . that could impact not just on our economy but the world economy." Even if the administration felt compelled to deliver this message privately, why undercut the perception of U.S.-Israel unity on the military option?
That same month, an open microphone caught part of a private conversation between Mr. Obama and French President Nicolas Sarkozy. Mr. Sarkozy said of Israel's premier, "I can't stand Netanyahu. He's a liar." Rather than defend Israel's back, Mr. Obama piled on: "You're tired of him; what about me? I have to deal with him every day."
In December of last year, again undercutting the credibility of the Israeli military option, Mr. Panetta used a high-profile speech to challenge the idea that an Israeli strike could eliminate or substantially delay Iran's nuclear program, and he warned that "the United States would obviously be blamed."
Mr. Panetta also addressed the Israeli-Palestinian peace process by lecturing Israel to "just get to the damn table." This, despite the fact that Israel had been actively pursuing direct negotiations with the Palestinians, only to watch the Palestinian president abandon talks and unilaterally pursue statehood at the U.N. The Obama team thought the problem was with Israel.
In January of this year, Mr. Obama referred to the Turkish Prime Minister as one of the five world leaders with whom he has developed "bonds of trust." According to Mr. Obama, these bonds have "allowed us to execute effective diplomacy." The Turkish government had earlier sanctioned a six-ship flotilla to penetrate Israel's naval blockade of Hamas-controlled Gaza. Mr. Erdogan had said that Israel's defensive response was "cause for war."
At a conference in Tunis last month, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was asked about Mr. Obama pandering to "Zionist lobbies." She acknowledged that it was "a fair question" and went on to explain that any pandering is simply election year politics.
All of this has been so bad, that even other Democrats have weighed in. Just last year, a number of leading Democrats, including Sen. Harry Reid and Rep. Steny Hoyer, felt compelled to speak out in response to Mr. Obama's proposal for Israel to return to its indefensible pre-1967 borders. Rep. Eliot Engel told CNN that "for the president to emphasize that . . . was a very big mistake."
In April 2010, 38 Democratic senators signed a critical letter to Secretary Clinton following the administration's public (and private) dressing down of the Israeli government.
Sen. Charles Schumer used even stronger language in 2010 when he responded to "something I have never heard before," from the Obama State Department, "which is, the relationship of Israel and the United States depends on the pace of the negotiations. That is terrible. That is a dagger."
Sen. Joe Lieberman said of Mr. Obama last year, "I think he's handled the relationship with Israel in a way that has encouraged Israel's enemies, and really unsettled the Israelis."
Now, just three more quick items, because the American press has not done a very good job of reporting them at all:
Item 1: In December of last year, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton compared Israel’s religious Jews to the leadership of Iran and compared them to the Jim Crow South. This is nothing short of a piece than the ignominious UN declaration that Israel is an apartheid, racist state.
Item 2: President Obama’s administration has twice leaked information about Israel that both weakens Israel and strengthens Iran:
a. Just last month, The New York Times reported that the US military had just finished a secret war game to test the repercussions of an Israeli attack on Iran, and concluded that the chances were high that the US would end up drawn into a broader regional war that would leave hundreds of Americans dead.
"The results of the war game were particularly troubling to Gen. James N. Mattis, who commands all American forces in the Middle East, Persian Gulf and Southwest Asia….General Mattis told aides that an Israeli first strike would be likely to have dire consequences across the region and for United States forces there."
The message was clear: The US is highly unlikely to support an Israeli strike. (h/t CS Monitor).
b. This month, the administration leaked that Israel has obtained access to bases in Azerbaijan, on Iran's border.
President Obama has, thus, frustrated Israel’s defense and self-defense and at the same time, on the other side of the same coin, bought Iran more time. Let it not go unknown, however, that Iran is not just Israel’s enemy, it is our enemy, too; it has been at war with us for over 30 years and Reuters reported just yesterday on Iranian and Hezbollah agents in New York City.
This moment, when we think about all that has taken place and all that we celebrate having taken place in Israel, let us remember the sobering words Charles Krauthammer reminded us of in citing Milan Kundera: Small nations can disappear. Czechoslovakia was a small nation and it disappeared. Israel is a small nation, too. And, let us add a corollary to this: In the age of nuclear weapons, especially in an age where a suicidal cult-nation is set on acquiring nuclear weapons, large nations like the United States can disappear too. President Obama has weakened Israel and in fact strengthened her and our enemies: Why would he do that?
Our job is simple: to prevent someone from someday ever having to write a book entitled “Why America Slept.”
By Seth Leibsohn
Good morning. It’s Friday, April 6, 2012. For our Jewish brethren tonight it’s Passover, a story of redemption, of fleeing slavery and entering freedom. For our Christian brethren it is Good Friday, the day Jesus was crucified. As I’ve heard any number of pastors say over the years, “I don’t know why we call it ‘good’ Friday.” But the reason, and the story, for both, is about redemption and freedom. It is also the day Abraham Lincoln—the man our school children used to be taught was the man who freed the slaves—it is the day he was shot. Lincoln of course died the day before Easter— the Christian story of hope and redemption. Given all that Lincoln stood for, and the unique timing of his death, the great political science professor Clinton Rossiter wrote of him that he was the “Christ-martyr of America’s democratic passion play.” What a phrase.
The Jews, Ruth Wisse has said, needed a desert experience to obtain their freedom—and they crossed the Sinai to begin that journey. Similarly, Christians have a risen Christ to take on the sins of the world and show the way of forgiveness and peace. It is with some sadness, then, that I have to report on a few contemporary events that also put me in the mind of all this. One man who helped preach and teach the story of the redemption through Christ and has helped show the way of reform for thousands of prisoners is Chuck Colson. Every Easter he would go to a prison and preach. Not this Sunday—he is unwell and in need of our prayers. Few have done as much for prison and prisoner reform as Chuck Colson. As Joe Loconte wrote of him: “His work among inmates earned him the 1993 Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion, placing him in the ranks of Billy Graham, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, and Mother Teresa.”
You see, Colson took a different view of crime, prisoners, and humanity: He believes the taproot of crime is sin and until people deal with that, they will not deal with their temporal guilt or habit of recidivism—and thus it is no accident that the prisons where Colson has operated have much lower recidivism rates than those that do not. Chuck Colson has done more for prison and criminal justice reform than any 20 or 40 departments of criminal justice in America. Our prayers are with him.
And, globally, our prayers must be with Israel right now, as well. The Sinai—which, let us remind, Israel returned to Egypt in a “land-for-peace” swap in 1979—is now “a terror zone,” according to the Israeli Prime Minister and as evidenced by the latest rocket attack on Israel, i.e., yesterday. By the way, one important fact here: When people say Israel must return the lands it took in the 1967 war against Israel: Israel has returned more the 90 percent of that land, it’s called the Sinai. And it is now a terror zone.
Israel has never been in more danger than it is right now—and not just because of the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and not just because of Yasser Arafat’s Fatah running of the West Bank, and not just because of Hamas’ running of the Gaza (land from 1967, by the way, Israel also returned “for peace”), and not just because Iran has threatened to remove Israel from the face of the earth as it tries to acquire nuclear weapons and funds both Hamas and Hezbollah. But, also, it must be said, because the United States has, by and under President Barack Obama, undermined Israel and, at the same time, emboldened her (and our) enemies.
Let us pause a moment on Egypt, which, along with Iran’s weapons program, will be President Obama’s foreign policy legacy. President Obama helped usher our ally Hosni Mubarak out of power. Mubarak kept the Muslim Brotherhood illegal in Egypt. The Brotherhood’s motto is: “Allah is our objective; the Prophet is our leader; the Quran is our law; Jihad is our way; dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.” Today, Mubarak is gone from power and the Brotherhood now controls the Parliament and has just fielded a candidate for President. Meantime, an even harder line Islamist is leading in the polls there, if he is not ultimately disqualified based on ancillary grounds having to do with his mother. We have turned an ally into an enemy—and it is the most populous Arab state in the world.
As we ask questions of our friends about President Obama, with what we call “intuitive empathy,” here is one: President Obama has weakened Israel and in fact strengthened her and our enemies: Why would he do that?
Perhaps, though, we need to set the predicate for this point. I contend there are few countries as culturally and politically aligned with the United States as Israel. Indeed, just to take one crude fact, in almost any given year, no country votes with the United States at the UN more than Israel—and not just on Middle East issues, but on every issue.
Now, back to President Obama and Israel: Just a few facts. Can you name me one other country our President has publicly lectured about its borders and what they need to be? President Obama did that to Israel last year. And if Israel actually heeded President Obama’s lecture, it would make Israel 9 miles wide at its most vulnerable point, half the width of the Washington Beltway. But let’s look at the longer record here, courtesy of Dan Senor in the Wall Street Journal:
President Obama, from day one of his administration, has been pressuring Israel to freeze settlement building—and putting such building of housing on par with Palestinian terrorism. Housing on the one hand; the slaughter of innocents on the other.
In October 2011, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta publically said Israel was “isolating itself” in world affairs.
By the way, Mr. Panetta's criticism was promptly endorsed by the Turkish Prime Minister, a harsh critic of Israel, who said Mr. Panetta was "correct in his assumptions." Indeed, almost every time the Obama administration has scolded Israel, the charges have been repeated by Turkish officials.
In November of last year, in advance of meeting with the Israeli Defense Minister, Mr. Panetta publicly previewed his message. He would warn Israel against a military strike on Iran's nuclear program: "There are going to be economic consequences . . . that could impact not just on our economy but the world economy." Even if the administration felt compelled to deliver this message privately, why undercut the perception of U.S.-Israel unity on the military option?
That same month, an open microphone caught part of a private conversation between Mr. Obama and French President Nicolas Sarkozy. Mr. Sarkozy said of Israel's premier, "I can't stand Netanyahu. He's a liar." Rather than defend Israel's back, Mr. Obama piled on: "You're tired of him; what about me? I have to deal with him every day."
In December of last year, again undercutting the credibility of the Israeli military option, Mr. Panetta used a high-profile speech to challenge the idea that an Israeli strike could eliminate or substantially delay Iran's nuclear program, and he warned that "the United States would obviously be blamed."
Mr. Panetta also addressed the Israeli-Palestinian peace process by lecturing Israel to "just get to the damn table." This, despite the fact that Israel had been actively pursuing direct negotiations with the Palestinians, only to watch the Palestinian president abandon talks and unilaterally pursue statehood at the U.N. The Obama team thought the problem was with Israel.
In January of this year, Mr. Obama referred to the Turkish Prime Minister as one of the five world leaders with whom he has developed "bonds of trust." According to Mr. Obama, these bonds have "allowed us to execute effective diplomacy." The Turkish government had earlier sanctioned a six-ship flotilla to penetrate Israel's naval blockade of Hamas-controlled Gaza. Mr. Erdogan had said that Israel's defensive response was "cause for war."
At a conference in Tunis last month, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was asked about Mr. Obama pandering to "Zionist lobbies." She acknowledged that it was "a fair question" and went on to explain that any pandering is simply election year politics.
All of this has been so bad, that even other Democrats have weighed in. Just last year, a number of leading Democrats, including Sen. Harry Reid and Rep. Steny Hoyer, felt compelled to speak out in response to Mr. Obama's proposal for Israel to return to its indefensible pre-1967 borders. Rep. Eliot Engel told CNN that "for the president to emphasize that . . . was a very big mistake."
In April 2010, 38 Democratic senators signed a critical letter to Secretary Clinton following the administration's public (and private) dressing down of the Israeli government.
Sen. Charles Schumer used even stronger language in 2010 when he responded to "something I have never heard before," from the Obama State Department, "which is, the relationship of Israel and the United States depends on the pace of the negotiations. That is terrible. That is a dagger."
Sen. Joe Lieberman said of Mr. Obama last year, "I think he's handled the relationship with Israel in a way that has encouraged Israel's enemies, and really unsettled the Israelis."
Now, just three more quick items, because the American press has not done a very good job of reporting them at all:
Item 1: In December of last year, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton compared Israel’s religious Jews to the leadership of Iran and compared them to the Jim Crow South. This is nothing short of a piece than the ignominious UN declaration that Israel is an apartheid, racist state.
Item 2: President Obama’s administration has twice leaked information about Israel that both weakens Israel and strengthens Iran:
a. Just last month, The New York Times reported that the US military had just finished a secret war game to test the repercussions of an Israeli attack on Iran, and concluded that the chances were high that the US would end up drawn into a broader regional war that would leave hundreds of Americans dead.
"The results of the war game were particularly troubling to Gen. James N. Mattis, who commands all American forces in the Middle East, Persian Gulf and Southwest Asia….General Mattis told aides that an Israeli first strike would be likely to have dire consequences across the region and for United States forces there."
The message was clear: The US is highly unlikely to support an Israeli strike. (h/t CS Monitor).
b. This month, the administration leaked that Israel has obtained access to bases in Azerbaijan, on Iran's border.
President Obama has, thus, frustrated Israel’s defense and self-defense and at the same time, on the other side of the same coin, bought Iran more time. Let it not go unknown, however, that Iran is not just Israel’s enemy, it is our enemy, too; it has been at war with us for over 30 years and Reuters reported just yesterday on Iranian and Hezbollah agents in New York City.
This moment, when we think about all that has taken place and all that we celebrate having taken place in Israel, let us remember the sobering words Charles Krauthammer reminded us of in citing Milan Kundera: Small nations can disappear. Czechoslovakia was a small nation and it disappeared. Israel is a small nation, too. And, let us add a corollary to this: In the age of nuclear weapons, especially in an age where a suicidal cult-nation is set on acquiring nuclear weapons, large nations like the United States can disappear too. President Obama has weakened Israel and in fact strengthened her and our enemies: Why would he do that?
Our job is simple: to prevent someone from someday ever having to write a book entitled “Why America Slept.”
Friday, March 23, 2012
Seth Leibson 03-23-2012
Time To Wake Up
As Broadcast on Bill Bennett’s Morning in America
March 23, 2012
By Seth Leibsohn
I wish to pick up where we were last week, discussing how to talk to Democrats and Independents about the election. As we were saying, we must engage these discussions with “Intuitive empathy.” Just to go back, “Intuitive” means instinctive or something based on feeling rather than reason. “Empathy” means to share feelings, out of concern. So what we are asking for here is that we speak to our fellow countrymen with a sincere sharing of deep concern about our country or, as I should like to do today: about our countrymen, our citizens. And for what it’s worth, I think it was Michael Deaver who wrote that Ronald Reagan’s favorite word was “citizen.”
So, for size, try a fact or series of facts that concern you and should concern others and follow it or them up with a question such as I posed last week: “Why would our president do this?” Here are some examples and I’d love for you to call and email in with more:
Last week, we talked about how the President has made the country weaker as a matter of national defense. This week, let’s talk about our own general welfare. What has the President done to make life easier to live, to work, to support your family? What has he done—in the words of the Constitution—to provide for the General Welfare? Has he, and have his policies, indeed made life easier in this country or more difficult? Easier to find work, easier to get to work, easier to raise and support a family? Or, in fact, have his policies made life more difficult—more difficult to find work, to get to work, to raise and support a family?
Let’s go to the first thing most of us deal with every week—at a minimum: Gas prices. Gas prices affect all of this and all of us. Today, the national average gas price is $3.88. That’s the average—in some places in the country it’s actually $4.50. In January 2009, when President Obama came into office, the average gas price was just over $1.80. President Obama had just hired as his Energy Secretary a man who just four months prior said “Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.”
Why would our President hire a man as his Energy Secretary who wanted to make gas prices higher in America?
And did President Obama and the Obama administration help make gas prices higher? According to the President of the Institute for Energy Research (as quoted over at the Powerline blog), this administration has “closed development of millions of acres of onshore and offshore federal lands for oil and gas production.” Additionally, “the Energy Information Administration released data this month that shows oil production on federal lands is down 13 percent this year under the Obama administration. Natural gas production is at a 9 year low.”
Yesterday, the President gave a speech in Oklahoma trying to take credit for opening some oil pipelines. But the reason they aren’t open now is due to his administration. And, if he had approved the XL Pipeline: “America would be well on its way to bringing more than 700,000 barrels of Canadian oil on line. That’s more than twice the oil that was produced on federal onshore lands last year, and it could have created as many as 20,000 jobs in the process.”
Now, just briefly, let’s look at a few other energy policies this administration has taken (courtesy of John Boehner’s office):
The Obama administration scrapped “leases for oil-shale development” and canceled 77 leases for oil and gas production in Utah in its first year in office.
In January of 2010, the Obama administration announced new bureaucratic hurdles to American energy production that Secretary Salazar admitted “could add delays to the leasing and drilling process.”
In March of 2010, instead of opening new areas to energy exploration and development, President Obama blocked deep-ocean energy production on 60 percent of America’s Outer Continental Shelf.
In December of 2010, the president re-imposed and expanded the moratorium on offshore energy production.
In May of last year, President Obama issued a formal statement opposing House-passed Restarting American Offshore Leasing Now Act and Putting the Gulf of Mexico Back to Work Act, legislation designed to jumpstart American energy production, address rising gas prices, and help create new jobs.
In June of last year, the White House opposed the House-passed Jobs & Energy Permitting Act that would unlock an estimated 27 billion barrels of oil and 132 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.
In November of last year, the Obama Administration released a plan for a five-year moratorium on offshore energy production, placing “some of the most promising energy resources in the world off-limits.”
Let me give you a few more from last year and you tell me if this administration is trying to make energy—for your homes, for your cars—easier to come by or harder, less expensive or more expensive. These stats from the API:
-The Administration proposed billions in new taxes on oil and gas industry in FY 2012 budget proposal (February).
-The Administration issued an Advance Notice regarding new regulations for gas gathering lines that would substantially impact development of the Marcellus Shale (August).
-The Administration proposed one-size-fits-all new source performance standards that, lacking a phase-in period to manufacture the control equipment, may significantly hamper oil and gas operations (August).
-The Administration again proposed billions in new taxes on the oil and gas industry (September).
-The Administration issued a new 2012-2017 five-year plan that fails to open any new offshore areas to oil and gas development (November).
-The Administration raised the minimum bid amount for offshore lease blocks in water depths of 400 meters and greater from $37.50 per acre to $100 per acre (December).
So, present any of these facts to your friends and ask: “Why would the President do this?” Ask: “Do any of these things make life easier or harder on Americans?”
Let’s ask a few more fact-based questions. What have the administration’s rule-making and regulating policies led to? More employment and growth of the economy? More businesses opening up here? No. The opposite. According to the Heritage Foundation/Wall Street Journal measure of economic freedom, the United States has fallen from No. 6 to No. 10 since the end of the George W. Bush administration in 2009. The U.S. also has dropped rank in the ease of doing business, as measured by the World Bank, and in global competitiveness, as measured by the World Economic Forum. The question: Why has this happened? Why won’t the administration move heaven and earth in its regulatory agencies to reverse this decline? Why does it want to tax business owners and entrepreneurs more when it proposes budgets no amount of taxation on the business or owner class can meet? And, ultimately, who pays for all this? The wealthy; or the poor and middle class?
Finally, this—Unemployment under President Obama has gone up from over 7 percent to over 10 percent and is now settled at over 8 percent. Please name me one major business or entrepreneurial incentive program this administration has championed. Truly, can you name one? Just one. I’m guessing you cannot. If you cannot, why not?
What will this President be known for on the domestic front? Health Care Reform is clearly a contender if not the absolute right answer. But then ask your friends this: If the President’s health care overhaul was such a good idea, why is it now coming in at a much higher cost than was promised, why have waivers to it been granted to select corporations, and why is it true that today, today, more American adults lack health insurance coverage than in any year since Gallup and Healthways started tracking this in 2008?
These are facts—and these are the questions. Simple questions that beg answers. They beg answers of concern to our fellow countrymen, our fellow citizens….because in this democratic country of ours where we hold our officials accountable, such evidence of making life harder and more expensive demands a verdict.
Final note. It needs to be reported. After all the alarums and excursions by the Democrats generally, and Barack Obama specifically, about the ruined international relations of the George Bush Presidency, I give you this headline from Gallup this morning: “The majority of Egyptians (56%) now see closer relations with the U.S. as a bad thing for their country, up sharply from 40% in December 2011. They are more likely to see a benefit from closer relations with Turkey and Iran.” We’ve moved the largest Arab country in the world—an ally—into an enemy, and drove it to Iran. George Bush do anything like that? Just another question.
As Broadcast on Bill Bennett’s Morning in America
March 23, 2012
By Seth Leibsohn
I wish to pick up where we were last week, discussing how to talk to Democrats and Independents about the election. As we were saying, we must engage these discussions with “Intuitive empathy.” Just to go back, “Intuitive” means instinctive or something based on feeling rather than reason. “Empathy” means to share feelings, out of concern. So what we are asking for here is that we speak to our fellow countrymen with a sincere sharing of deep concern about our country or, as I should like to do today: about our countrymen, our citizens. And for what it’s worth, I think it was Michael Deaver who wrote that Ronald Reagan’s favorite word was “citizen.”
So, for size, try a fact or series of facts that concern you and should concern others and follow it or them up with a question such as I posed last week: “Why would our president do this?” Here are some examples and I’d love for you to call and email in with more:
Last week, we talked about how the President has made the country weaker as a matter of national defense. This week, let’s talk about our own general welfare. What has the President done to make life easier to live, to work, to support your family? What has he done—in the words of the Constitution—to provide for the General Welfare? Has he, and have his policies, indeed made life easier in this country or more difficult? Easier to find work, easier to get to work, easier to raise and support a family? Or, in fact, have his policies made life more difficult—more difficult to find work, to get to work, to raise and support a family?
Let’s go to the first thing most of us deal with every week—at a minimum: Gas prices. Gas prices affect all of this and all of us. Today, the national average gas price is $3.88. That’s the average—in some places in the country it’s actually $4.50. In January 2009, when President Obama came into office, the average gas price was just over $1.80. President Obama had just hired as his Energy Secretary a man who just four months prior said “Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.”
Why would our President hire a man as his Energy Secretary who wanted to make gas prices higher in America?
And did President Obama and the Obama administration help make gas prices higher? According to the President of the Institute for Energy Research (as quoted over at the Powerline blog), this administration has “closed development of millions of acres of onshore and offshore federal lands for oil and gas production.” Additionally, “the Energy Information Administration released data this month that shows oil production on federal lands is down 13 percent this year under the Obama administration. Natural gas production is at a 9 year low.”
Yesterday, the President gave a speech in Oklahoma trying to take credit for opening some oil pipelines. But the reason they aren’t open now is due to his administration. And, if he had approved the XL Pipeline: “America would be well on its way to bringing more than 700,000 barrels of Canadian oil on line. That’s more than twice the oil that was produced on federal onshore lands last year, and it could have created as many as 20,000 jobs in the process.”
Now, just briefly, let’s look at a few other energy policies this administration has taken (courtesy of John Boehner’s office):
The Obama administration scrapped “leases for oil-shale development” and canceled 77 leases for oil and gas production in Utah in its first year in office.
In January of 2010, the Obama administration announced new bureaucratic hurdles to American energy production that Secretary Salazar admitted “could add delays to the leasing and drilling process.”
In March of 2010, instead of opening new areas to energy exploration and development, President Obama blocked deep-ocean energy production on 60 percent of America’s Outer Continental Shelf.
In December of 2010, the president re-imposed and expanded the moratorium on offshore energy production.
In May of last year, President Obama issued a formal statement opposing House-passed Restarting American Offshore Leasing Now Act and Putting the Gulf of Mexico Back to Work Act, legislation designed to jumpstart American energy production, address rising gas prices, and help create new jobs.
In June of last year, the White House opposed the House-passed Jobs & Energy Permitting Act that would unlock an estimated 27 billion barrels of oil and 132 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.
In November of last year, the Obama Administration released a plan for a five-year moratorium on offshore energy production, placing “some of the most promising energy resources in the world off-limits.”
Let me give you a few more from last year and you tell me if this administration is trying to make energy—for your homes, for your cars—easier to come by or harder, less expensive or more expensive. These stats from the API:
-The Administration proposed billions in new taxes on oil and gas industry in FY 2012 budget proposal (February).
-The Administration issued an Advance Notice regarding new regulations for gas gathering lines that would substantially impact development of the Marcellus Shale (August).
-The Administration proposed one-size-fits-all new source performance standards that, lacking a phase-in period to manufacture the control equipment, may significantly hamper oil and gas operations (August).
-The Administration again proposed billions in new taxes on the oil and gas industry (September).
-The Administration issued a new 2012-2017 five-year plan that fails to open any new offshore areas to oil and gas development (November).
-The Administration raised the minimum bid amount for offshore lease blocks in water depths of 400 meters and greater from $37.50 per acre to $100 per acre (December).
So, present any of these facts to your friends and ask: “Why would the President do this?” Ask: “Do any of these things make life easier or harder on Americans?”
Let’s ask a few more fact-based questions. What have the administration’s rule-making and regulating policies led to? More employment and growth of the economy? More businesses opening up here? No. The opposite. According to the Heritage Foundation/Wall Street Journal measure of economic freedom, the United States has fallen from No. 6 to No. 10 since the end of the George W. Bush administration in 2009. The U.S. also has dropped rank in the ease of doing business, as measured by the World Bank, and in global competitiveness, as measured by the World Economic Forum. The question: Why has this happened? Why won’t the administration move heaven and earth in its regulatory agencies to reverse this decline? Why does it want to tax business owners and entrepreneurs more when it proposes budgets no amount of taxation on the business or owner class can meet? And, ultimately, who pays for all this? The wealthy; or the poor and middle class?
Finally, this—Unemployment under President Obama has gone up from over 7 percent to over 10 percent and is now settled at over 8 percent. Please name me one major business or entrepreneurial incentive program this administration has championed. Truly, can you name one? Just one. I’m guessing you cannot. If you cannot, why not?
What will this President be known for on the domestic front? Health Care Reform is clearly a contender if not the absolute right answer. But then ask your friends this: If the President’s health care overhaul was such a good idea, why is it now coming in at a much higher cost than was promised, why have waivers to it been granted to select corporations, and why is it true that today, today, more American adults lack health insurance coverage than in any year since Gallup and Healthways started tracking this in 2008?
These are facts—and these are the questions. Simple questions that beg answers. They beg answers of concern to our fellow countrymen, our fellow citizens….because in this democratic country of ours where we hold our officials accountable, such evidence of making life harder and more expensive demands a verdict.
Final note. It needs to be reported. After all the alarums and excursions by the Democrats generally, and Barack Obama specifically, about the ruined international relations of the George Bush Presidency, I give you this headline from Gallup this morning: “The majority of Egyptians (56%) now see closer relations with the U.S. as a bad thing for their country, up sharply from 40% in December 2011. They are more likely to see a benefit from closer relations with Turkey and Iran.” We’ve moved the largest Arab country in the world—an ally—into an enemy, and drove it to Iran. George Bush do anything like that? Just another question.
Sunday, March 18, 2012
Seth 03-15
Time To Wake Up
March 15, 2012
By Seth Leibsohn
This morning, our topic is two-fold, and I’ve left open the entirety of the second hour (7 a.m. Eastern) to take your calls on this. First, is America stronger or weaker as a result of President Obama’s policies. Second, how to talk to Democrats and Independents about the 2012 election.
Let me begin with a poll from Gallup this week. Today, “A slim majority of Americans (54%) say the United States is the Number 1 military power in the world, down from 64% in 2010.” That’s down ten points from two years ago—and it is the lowest level in 13 years, i.e., the Clinton years.
To dispense right away with the immediate defense of any position that says we actually should be weaker, let me say that I can’t imagine any President ever saying that. No Commander in Chief would verbally state he or she wants to preside over a number two, three, or four military. And anyone who believes our military power should be weaker—or weak—simply does not understand the Constitution which, itself, states our government is to “provide for the common defense” and “secure the blessings of liberty.”
In sum, if you are number two, three, or four, you are defeatable; and, in the world we live in or are about to live in, to be defeatable can very well mean to cease to exist. Our enemies do call for our “death” after all. Not our enslavement, our death.
So, let us run down a few statements and policies that have come from President Obama, and see what their effect has had—always with the following questions in mind: Does this serve to tell our enemies we are going to be stronger or weaker? Does this serve to tell our allies we are going to be stronger or weaker? Does this tell our citizens we are going to be stronger or weaker? And, finally, most importantly: Does this actually make us stronger or weaker?
Let’s work our way forward. In his first year in office, President Obama communicated to the world—at the UN, at home, and abroad—that we had engaged in torture, and, of course, that we would no longer do so on his watch. To say and admit this about your country is a terrible thing to do—especially, especially, when he and everyone knows darned well that at a very minimum whether waterboarding as we practiced it constituted torture or not was a legally disputable question.
While in Strasberg, again, in his first year, President Obama said “there have been times where America has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive.” To repeat, America was arrogant, dismissive, and derisive.
In Latin America, he said America had not “pursued and sustained engagement with our neighbors.” He also said “we have at times been disengaged, and at times we sought to dictate our terms.”
Recall, too, our President said the following when asked if he believed in American exceptionalism: “I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.” That’s a way of saying “no” as the Wall Street Journal editorialists put it.
Our President, still in the first year, gave a speech in Washington, DC where he said “Unfortunately, faced with an uncertain threat, our government made a series of hasty decisions…. I also believe that all too often our government made decisions based on fear rather than foresight, that all too often our government trimmed facts and evidence to fit ideological predispositions.”
Separately, President Obama said in a speech at the National Archives, “There is also no question that Guantanamo set back the moral authority that is America’s strongest currency in the world.”
Note, he is talking about our country here. Note, too, the loudest complaints about Guantanamo came from the fever swamps of the terrorist media outlets—as a tool of propaganda against us. Note, too, there was no Guantanamo when Muslim terrorists attacked us in 1993 (the first World Trade Center bombing), 1996 (the Khobar towers), 1998 (The African Embassies), 2000 (The USS Cole), or on September 11, 2001. Was our moral authority high when they were killing us? Another question before I continue on: What other world or non-world leader apologizes for, nay, indicts, his own country like this?
Let me also add that the President bowed to a Saudi King, a Chinese President, and an Emperor of Japan—none democratically elected, two out of three who rule regimes that truly know what “torture” is because their regimes practice it as a matter of policy they don’t think twice, or once, about.
Now let us turn to actions toward allies: Yanking missile defense installments from our allies, the Czech Republic and Poland; turning away a meeting with the Dalai Lama in deference to the Chinese; stiffing Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu two years ago and lecturing him on what Israel’s borders should be last year; imposing a travel tax on Canadians; siding with the Hugo Chavez ally in Honduras; telling the world Hosni Mubarak (our long time ally in Egypt) he had to go; and telling the Iranian dissidents in Iran (a sworn enemy of ours) in 2009 we would not “meddle” on their behalf—the same year he sent a greeting, a new year’s message, to the Iranian leadership and put the Iranian people and the Iranian leaders on the same moral plane and in the same moral position.
Now, let us go to policy here at home: Two months ago President Obama made an announcement about our military—the first sentence of the CNN story was this: “President Barack Obama unveiled his administration's plan Thursday for a leaner, cheaper military.” Leaner and cheaper. Let me continue from CNN. The new strategy “eliminates the military's ability to actively fight two major wars at once.” One more sentence from CNN if you’ll allow me: “[The] announcement follows multiple missile tests by Iran in recent days and comments by Iranian leaders that they could choke off the Strait of Homuz, a major transit point for world oil supplies.”
What does this plan actually mean in troop levels? It means a cut to the Army by 80,000 soldiers, taking it below 490,000, and the Marine Corps by 20,000, taking it to 182,000,000. Not bad enough? How about this: we will also be limiting pay raises for troops, increasing health insurance fees for military retirees and closing bases in the United States. That was January.
Now let’s go to this week: As Peter Brookes wrote, “Team Obama has decided to reduce US forces in Europe by about 15,000 troops.” Peter tells us what this means specifically, as this “will undermine our ability to get to fights quickly and project power in such places as the Middle East, Africa and Eurasia. And there's no shortage of problems in those places.
Fewer troops in Europe would also mean fewer training exercises with our NATO allies, helping to prepare them for deployments to such places as Afghanistan, where they work shoulder-to-shoulder with US forces.”
Now, on all this, there’s a lot I didn’t say and a lot more examples I could go into. But suffice, to ask for now: Is America stronger or weaker because of these statements, actions, and policies? And, if weaker, do we not want to ask our fellow countrymen and country women this simple question: “Why would our President do this?” Is this not evidence that demands a verdict?
This gets me to the second part of our topic we will explore more in the second hour—how to talk to Democrats and Independents about the election. First, as I mentioned last week, we must do so with what a friend calls “Intuitive empathy.” What does that mean? Intuitive means instinctive or something based on feeling rather than reason. Empathy means to share feelings, out of concern. So what we are asking for here is that we speak to our fellow countrymen with a sincere sharing of deep concern about our country. So, for size, try a fact or series of facts that concern you and should concern others and follow it or them up with a question such as I posed earlier: “Why would our president do this?” Here are some examples and I’d love for you to call and email in with more: From Egypt to Iran, from Russia to China, the world is becoming more dangerous and our enemies more aggressive, yet the President is proposing record defense budget cuts. Why would he do that?
President Obama said he would cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term. But, he has not proposed a budget for less than 1 trillion dollars in deficit spending in any of his budgets. When he came into office, the national debt was 10.6 trillion dollars. Today, the national debt is over 15 trillion dollars. Clearly President Obama has broken his promise and increased our nation's indebtedness. Why would he do that?
When President Obama and his administration came into office, unemployment was just over 7% in this country. They said we needed a 800 billion dollar stimulus package to keep unemployment from going above 8%. In fact, President Obama, himself, said we needed the spending to "save or create 3 million to 4 million jobs." We got the stimulus package and unemployment went up, indeed it went up above 10% and is now over 8%. And, indeed, as NBC reported (among others) there are one million fewer people working than there were when President Obama signed that stimulus. So, we got more spending, more indebtedness, and more unemployment. Yet the administration still defends this spending and indebtedness. Why would they do that?
President Obama cancelled an oil deal with Canada known as the XL Pipeline. That deal, which our good ally, the Canadians wanted, would have helped bring more energy sources to the United States and it would have created tens of thousands of jobs here as well. When the Congress tried to over-ride the President's canceling of that deal, he personally lobbied members of Congress not to over-ride his decision. Why would he cancel a deal that would have made us less dependent on enemy sources of oil, why would he cancel a deal that would have created more jobs here, and why would he send such a bad signal to an ally of ours?
Speaking of allies, President Obama has visited Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey among other countries. He has not visited our long-standing ally, Israel. In addition, he has publicly lectured Israel on what its borders should be (and if Israel did accept the borders President Obama wanted, it would be nine miles wide at its most vulnerable point). His administration has also said some very negative things about Israel. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said, for example, the religious Jews in Israel reminded her of the leadership of Iran and the pre-civil rights South in this country. Why would the President and this administration treat an ally, an endangered ally, this way?
So, the point: Intuitive empathy in the form of fact-based questions. Because we in a democracy have to hold our leaders accountable. And if they are making us weaker—economically weaker, strategically weaker, morally weaker—then accountability cannot be put at a discount. Indeed, it must be our first duty as citizens. There is a lot of evidence—and it demands a verdict.
March 15, 2012
By Seth Leibsohn
This morning, our topic is two-fold, and I’ve left open the entirety of the second hour (7 a.m. Eastern) to take your calls on this. First, is America stronger or weaker as a result of President Obama’s policies. Second, how to talk to Democrats and Independents about the 2012 election.
Let me begin with a poll from Gallup this week. Today, “A slim majority of Americans (54%) say the United States is the Number 1 military power in the world, down from 64% in 2010.” That’s down ten points from two years ago—and it is the lowest level in 13 years, i.e., the Clinton years.
To dispense right away with the immediate defense of any position that says we actually should be weaker, let me say that I can’t imagine any President ever saying that. No Commander in Chief would verbally state he or she wants to preside over a number two, three, or four military. And anyone who believes our military power should be weaker—or weak—simply does not understand the Constitution which, itself, states our government is to “provide for the common defense” and “secure the blessings of liberty.”
In sum, if you are number two, three, or four, you are defeatable; and, in the world we live in or are about to live in, to be defeatable can very well mean to cease to exist. Our enemies do call for our “death” after all. Not our enslavement, our death.
So, let us run down a few statements and policies that have come from President Obama, and see what their effect has had—always with the following questions in mind: Does this serve to tell our enemies we are going to be stronger or weaker? Does this serve to tell our allies we are going to be stronger or weaker? Does this tell our citizens we are going to be stronger or weaker? And, finally, most importantly: Does this actually make us stronger or weaker?
Let’s work our way forward. In his first year in office, President Obama communicated to the world—at the UN, at home, and abroad—that we had engaged in torture, and, of course, that we would no longer do so on his watch. To say and admit this about your country is a terrible thing to do—especially, especially, when he and everyone knows darned well that at a very minimum whether waterboarding as we practiced it constituted torture or not was a legally disputable question.
While in Strasberg, again, in his first year, President Obama said “there have been times where America has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive.” To repeat, America was arrogant, dismissive, and derisive.
In Latin America, he said America had not “pursued and sustained engagement with our neighbors.” He also said “we have at times been disengaged, and at times we sought to dictate our terms.”
Recall, too, our President said the following when asked if he believed in American exceptionalism: “I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.” That’s a way of saying “no” as the Wall Street Journal editorialists put it.
Our President, still in the first year, gave a speech in Washington, DC where he said “Unfortunately, faced with an uncertain threat, our government made a series of hasty decisions…. I also believe that all too often our government made decisions based on fear rather than foresight, that all too often our government trimmed facts and evidence to fit ideological predispositions.”
Separately, President Obama said in a speech at the National Archives, “There is also no question that Guantanamo set back the moral authority that is America’s strongest currency in the world.”
Note, he is talking about our country here. Note, too, the loudest complaints about Guantanamo came from the fever swamps of the terrorist media outlets—as a tool of propaganda against us. Note, too, there was no Guantanamo when Muslim terrorists attacked us in 1993 (the first World Trade Center bombing), 1996 (the Khobar towers), 1998 (The African Embassies), 2000 (The USS Cole), or on September 11, 2001. Was our moral authority high when they were killing us? Another question before I continue on: What other world or non-world leader apologizes for, nay, indicts, his own country like this?
Let me also add that the President bowed to a Saudi King, a Chinese President, and an Emperor of Japan—none democratically elected, two out of three who rule regimes that truly know what “torture” is because their regimes practice it as a matter of policy they don’t think twice, or once, about.
Now let us turn to actions toward allies: Yanking missile defense installments from our allies, the Czech Republic and Poland; turning away a meeting with the Dalai Lama in deference to the Chinese; stiffing Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu two years ago and lecturing him on what Israel’s borders should be last year; imposing a travel tax on Canadians; siding with the Hugo Chavez ally in Honduras; telling the world Hosni Mubarak (our long time ally in Egypt) he had to go; and telling the Iranian dissidents in Iran (a sworn enemy of ours) in 2009 we would not “meddle” on their behalf—the same year he sent a greeting, a new year’s message, to the Iranian leadership and put the Iranian people and the Iranian leaders on the same moral plane and in the same moral position.
Now, let us go to policy here at home: Two months ago President Obama made an announcement about our military—the first sentence of the CNN story was this: “President Barack Obama unveiled his administration's plan Thursday for a leaner, cheaper military.” Leaner and cheaper. Let me continue from CNN. The new strategy “eliminates the military's ability to actively fight two major wars at once.” One more sentence from CNN if you’ll allow me: “[The] announcement follows multiple missile tests by Iran in recent days and comments by Iranian leaders that they could choke off the Strait of Homuz, a major transit point for world oil supplies.”
What does this plan actually mean in troop levels? It means a cut to the Army by 80,000 soldiers, taking it below 490,000, and the Marine Corps by 20,000, taking it to 182,000,000. Not bad enough? How about this: we will also be limiting pay raises for troops, increasing health insurance fees for military retirees and closing bases in the United States. That was January.
Now let’s go to this week: As Peter Brookes wrote, “Team Obama has decided to reduce US forces in Europe by about 15,000 troops.” Peter tells us what this means specifically, as this “will undermine our ability to get to fights quickly and project power in such places as the Middle East, Africa and Eurasia. And there's no shortage of problems in those places.
Fewer troops in Europe would also mean fewer training exercises with our NATO allies, helping to prepare them for deployments to such places as Afghanistan, where they work shoulder-to-shoulder with US forces.”
Now, on all this, there’s a lot I didn’t say and a lot more examples I could go into. But suffice, to ask for now: Is America stronger or weaker because of these statements, actions, and policies? And, if weaker, do we not want to ask our fellow countrymen and country women this simple question: “Why would our President do this?” Is this not evidence that demands a verdict?
This gets me to the second part of our topic we will explore more in the second hour—how to talk to Democrats and Independents about the election. First, as I mentioned last week, we must do so with what a friend calls “Intuitive empathy.” What does that mean? Intuitive means instinctive or something based on feeling rather than reason. Empathy means to share feelings, out of concern. So what we are asking for here is that we speak to our fellow countrymen with a sincere sharing of deep concern about our country. So, for size, try a fact or series of facts that concern you and should concern others and follow it or them up with a question such as I posed earlier: “Why would our president do this?” Here are some examples and I’d love for you to call and email in with more: From Egypt to Iran, from Russia to China, the world is becoming more dangerous and our enemies more aggressive, yet the President is proposing record defense budget cuts. Why would he do that?
President Obama said he would cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term. But, he has not proposed a budget for less than 1 trillion dollars in deficit spending in any of his budgets. When he came into office, the national debt was 10.6 trillion dollars. Today, the national debt is over 15 trillion dollars. Clearly President Obama has broken his promise and increased our nation's indebtedness. Why would he do that?
When President Obama and his administration came into office, unemployment was just over 7% in this country. They said we needed a 800 billion dollar stimulus package to keep unemployment from going above 8%. In fact, President Obama, himself, said we needed the spending to "save or create 3 million to 4 million jobs." We got the stimulus package and unemployment went up, indeed it went up above 10% and is now over 8%. And, indeed, as NBC reported (among others) there are one million fewer people working than there were when President Obama signed that stimulus. So, we got more spending, more indebtedness, and more unemployment. Yet the administration still defends this spending and indebtedness. Why would they do that?
President Obama cancelled an oil deal with Canada known as the XL Pipeline. That deal, which our good ally, the Canadians wanted, would have helped bring more energy sources to the United States and it would have created tens of thousands of jobs here as well. When the Congress tried to over-ride the President's canceling of that deal, he personally lobbied members of Congress not to over-ride his decision. Why would he cancel a deal that would have made us less dependent on enemy sources of oil, why would he cancel a deal that would have created more jobs here, and why would he send such a bad signal to an ally of ours?
Speaking of allies, President Obama has visited Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey among other countries. He has not visited our long-standing ally, Israel. In addition, he has publicly lectured Israel on what its borders should be (and if Israel did accept the borders President Obama wanted, it would be nine miles wide at its most vulnerable point). His administration has also said some very negative things about Israel. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said, for example, the religious Jews in Israel reminded her of the leadership of Iran and the pre-civil rights South in this country. Why would the President and this administration treat an ally, an endangered ally, this way?
So, the point: Intuitive empathy in the form of fact-based questions. Because we in a democracy have to hold our leaders accountable. And if they are making us weaker—economically weaker, strategically weaker, morally weaker—then accountability cannot be put at a discount. Indeed, it must be our first duty as citizens. There is a lot of evidence—and it demands a verdict.
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
Seth Leibson 03-09-2012
March 9, 2012
As Broadcast on Bill Bennett’s Morning in America
By Seth Leibsohn
Good morning. We begin our text today with an unlikely source, James Fallows, a national correspondent for the Atlantic Magazine and one of the most well-known journalists in “the club.” A former speechwriter for Jimmy Carter and editor of US News and World report, he has a big profile on President Barack Obama in the current issue of the Atlantic Magazine, analyzing his presidency thus far. The article is titled “Obama Explained.” Here is the line of his that caught my eye, and he writes it after surveying a group of like-minded and high-minded colleagues: “Having seen a number of presidencies unfold, and some unravel, I am fully aware of how difficult it is to assess them in real time. What I feel I’ve learned about Obama is that he was unready for the presidency and temperamentally unsuited to it in many ways.”
“Unready and temperamentally unsuited.” Fallows goes on to write, “The evidence is that Obama is learning, fast, to use the tools of office. Whether he is learning fast enough to have a chance to apply these skills in a second term—well, we’ll reconvene next year.”
This all reminds me of something Bill Bennett said in 2008: The presidency is too important a position for on-the-job training. Fallows and others in his league or of his viewpoint can say “He’s learning” or “He’ll get there” or whatever they think about how to overcome his leadership failures but the truth, I’m afraid, is far less wishful. Barack Obama may, indeed, get there. But this requires two responses:
1. He has done a lot already, he has accomplished a lot that, whether or not he was an amateur too short for the job, the damage is done and may take years to fix.
2. How in the name of everything serious and important can purported or reasonably smart men and women say that we can afford, that we can ever afford, a four year learning curve with someone unready and unsuited when the stakes are the United States of America and the free—and, frankly, the unfree—world? Since when did that excuse become appropriate? I don’t know about you, but in my line of work, I would never be hired for a job I was unready or unsuited for. And were I to trick people into thinking I was ready and suited for that job, and we go three to four years in and the assessment is I’m not quite ready or suited yet—well, we wouldn’t go three or four years in. Maybe six months. Maybe. Now, make that job the most important job in the history of the world.
Just what kind of pass are we willing to give this president or any president in the name of liberalism? Well, the pass we are willing to give him is a pass that has lead to and will lead to ever more high unemployment, high spending, record deficits, record debt, more energy dependence, fallen allies, and strengthened enemies.
That should be our candidates’ continued repetition throughout the campaign: high unemployment, high spending, record deficits, record debt, more energy dependence, fallen allies, and strengthened enemies.
You can fill in the facts almost any week since January of 2009 to highlight these issues, but just this past week gives us data on all of them--
To wit:
We’ll get new government unemployment numbers later this morning but yesterday, Gallup—which measures without seasonal adjustment—reported that unemployment increased to 9.1% in February from 8.6% in January and 8.5% in December. Beyond that, underemployment, which combines the percentage of workers who are unemployed and the percentage working part time but wanting full-time work, increased to 19.1% last month.
On energy dependence, as he did last month, President Obama spoke this week again about how we can not drill our way to energy independence—and he does so with a clever line the media swallows hook, line, and sinker. He keeps speaking of us as having only 2% of the world’s oil reserves. As John Hinderaker points out though—when you hear this, that we only have 2% of the world’s oil reserves you automatically or naturally think that means we only have 2% of the world’s oil in the ground here. That’s not what “reserves” mean in the United States. Here, “reserves” means only oil that is
1) legal to extract under current laws and regulations, and 2) economic to extract at current prices. So ANWR isn’t part of our reserves; the large majority of offshore areas that are off-limits to drilling are not part of our reserves; and all other deposits that can’t be accessed under current EPA regulations are not part of our reserves. Our reserves would grow overnight if the Democrats would allow more areas to be opened up for energy development.
Because the actual truth is the U.S. actually has the largest fossil fuel deposits of any country in the world. So, to give you the real truth here, I give you what the Investors’ Business Daily wrote on this:
President Obama canceled leases on federal lands in Utah, suspended them in Montana, delayed them in Colorado and Utah, and canceled lease sales off the Virginia coast.
His administration also has been slow-walking permits in the Gulf of Mexico, approving far fewer while stretching out review times, according to the Greater New Orleans Gulf Permit Index. The Energy Dept. says Gulf oil output will be down 17% by the end of 2013, compared with the start of 2011. Swift Energy President Bruce Vincent is right to say Obama has “done nothing but restrict access and delay permitting.”
Now read what he did yesterday—he lobbied Senators not to over-ride his veto of the XL Pipeline from Canada. As Mitch McConnell said: “at a moment when millions are out of work, gas prices are skyrocketing and the Middle East is in turmoil, we’ve got a president who’s up making phone calls trying to block a pipeline here at home.”
As for enemies and allies, the President gave a speech at AIPAC on the US and Israel last weekend and said “So there should not be a shred of doubt by now -- when the chips are down, I have Israel’s back.”
It’s not true. And by the way: Has anyone asked why the chips would ever be down? Israel has always had to defend itself, it has never known peace. So when the chips are down it can only mean one of two things: “all the time” or when the international community (read: the US) is pressuring Israel. Since we known it’s not all the time, let’s look at the latter:
Dan Senor published a pretty good timeline:
In October 2011, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta publically said Israel was “isolating itself” in world affairs.
President Obama, from day one of his administration, has been pressuring Israel to freeze settlement building—and putting such building of housing on par with Palestinian terrorism. Housing on the one hand; the slaughter of innocents on the other.
By the way, Mr. Panetta's criticism was promptly endorsed by the Turkish Prime Minister, a harsh critic of Israel, who said Mr. Panetta was "correct in his assumptions." Indeed, almost every time the Obama administration has scolded Israel, the charges have been repeated by Turkish officials.
In November of last year, in advance of meeting with the Israeli Defense Minister, Mr. Panetta publicly previewed his message. He would warn Israel against a military strike on Iran's nuclear program: "There are going to be economic consequences . . . that could impact not just on our economy but the world economy." Even if the administration felt compelled to deliver this message privately, why undercut the perception of U.S.-Israel unity on the military option?
That same month, an open microphone caught part of a private conversation between Mr. Obama and French President Nicolas Sarkozy. Mr. Sarkozy said of Israel's premier, "I can't stand Netanyahu. He's a liar." Rather than defend Israel's back, Mr. Obama piled on: "You're tired of him; what about me? I have to deal with him every day."
In December of last year, again undercutting the credibility of the Israeli military option, Mr. Panetta used a high-profile speech to challenge the idea that an Israeli strike could eliminate or substantially delay Iran's nuclear program, and he warned that "the United States would obviously be blamed."
Mr. Panetta also addressed the Israeli-Palestinian peace process by lecturing Israel to "just get to the damn table." This, despite the fact that Israel had been actively pursuing direct negotiations with the Palestinians, only to watch the Palestinian president abandon talks and unilaterally pursue statehood at the U.N. The Obama team thought the problem was with Israel.
In January of this year, Mr. Obama referred to the Turkish Prime Minister as one of the five world leaders with whom he has developed "bonds of trust." According to Mr. Obama, these bonds have "allowed us to execute effective diplomacy." The Turkish government had earlier sanctioned a six-ship flotilla to penetrate Israel's naval blockade of Hamas-controlled Gaza. Mr. Erdogan had said that Israel's defensive response was "cause for war."
At a conference in Tunis last month, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was asked about Mr. Obama pandering to "Zionist lobbies." She acknowledged that it was "a fair question" and went on to explain that any pandering is simply election year politics.
All of this has been so bad—never mind the stiffing of Benjamin Netanyahu or the comparison to the Jim Crow South Hillary Clinton made to Israel— that even other Democrats have weighed in. Just last year, a number of leading Democrats, including Sen. Harry Reid and Rep. Steny Hoyer, felt compelled to speak out in response to Mr. Obama's proposal for Israel to return to its indefensible pre-1967 borders. Rep. Eliot Engel told CNN that "for the president to emphasize that . . . was a very big mistake."
In April 2010, 38 Democratic senators signed a critical letter to Secretary Clinton following the administration's public (and private) dressing down of the Israeli government.
Sen. Charles Schumer used even stronger language in 2010 when he responded to "something I have never heard before," from the Obama State Department, "which is, the relationship of Israel and the United States depends on the pace of the negotiations. That is terrible. That is a dagger."
Sen. Joe Lieberman said of Mr. Obama last year, "I think he's handled the relationship with Israel in a way that has encouraged Israel's enemies, and really unsettled the Israelis."
I could go on and on.
We are now having to deal with Syria-again. But who appeased Syria? President Bush yanked our Ambassador from Syria; President Obama put a US Ambassador back in. Why did he do that, we should ask. Why, last year did Hillary Clinton call Syria’s Assad a reformer? We should ask. We have to deal with Iran. Who said Iran was not a threat and sought (and still seeks) non-preconditional talks with Iran? And, when democratic protestors took to the streets of Iran, who took the side of the mullahs? President Obama. Why did he do that, we should ask. And when our and Israel’s long-time ally in Egypt was clinging to power, who helped push him out so that the Muslim Brothers could take over? President Obama. Why did he do that, we should ask.
I return to our main point: high unemployment, high spending, record deficits, record debt, more energy dependence, fallen allies, and strengthened enemies.
And there are those who think that is just fine. It isn’t. Tell your friends about some of these facts, and ask them: “Why would our President do this?” I’d like to know the answer. We all should—because it’s about accountability here. That’s why we hold elections after all.
As Broadcast on Bill Bennett’s Morning in America
By Seth Leibsohn
Good morning. We begin our text today with an unlikely source, James Fallows, a national correspondent for the Atlantic Magazine and one of the most well-known journalists in “the club.” A former speechwriter for Jimmy Carter and editor of US News and World report, he has a big profile on President Barack Obama in the current issue of the Atlantic Magazine, analyzing his presidency thus far. The article is titled “Obama Explained.” Here is the line of his that caught my eye, and he writes it after surveying a group of like-minded and high-minded colleagues: “Having seen a number of presidencies unfold, and some unravel, I am fully aware of how difficult it is to assess them in real time. What I feel I’ve learned about Obama is that he was unready for the presidency and temperamentally unsuited to it in many ways.”
“Unready and temperamentally unsuited.” Fallows goes on to write, “The evidence is that Obama is learning, fast, to use the tools of office. Whether he is learning fast enough to have a chance to apply these skills in a second term—well, we’ll reconvene next year.”
This all reminds me of something Bill Bennett said in 2008: The presidency is too important a position for on-the-job training. Fallows and others in his league or of his viewpoint can say “He’s learning” or “He’ll get there” or whatever they think about how to overcome his leadership failures but the truth, I’m afraid, is far less wishful. Barack Obama may, indeed, get there. But this requires two responses:
1. He has done a lot already, he has accomplished a lot that, whether or not he was an amateur too short for the job, the damage is done and may take years to fix.
2. How in the name of everything serious and important can purported or reasonably smart men and women say that we can afford, that we can ever afford, a four year learning curve with someone unready and unsuited when the stakes are the United States of America and the free—and, frankly, the unfree—world? Since when did that excuse become appropriate? I don’t know about you, but in my line of work, I would never be hired for a job I was unready or unsuited for. And were I to trick people into thinking I was ready and suited for that job, and we go three to four years in and the assessment is I’m not quite ready or suited yet—well, we wouldn’t go three or four years in. Maybe six months. Maybe. Now, make that job the most important job in the history of the world.
Just what kind of pass are we willing to give this president or any president in the name of liberalism? Well, the pass we are willing to give him is a pass that has lead to and will lead to ever more high unemployment, high spending, record deficits, record debt, more energy dependence, fallen allies, and strengthened enemies.
That should be our candidates’ continued repetition throughout the campaign: high unemployment, high spending, record deficits, record debt, more energy dependence, fallen allies, and strengthened enemies.
You can fill in the facts almost any week since January of 2009 to highlight these issues, but just this past week gives us data on all of them--
To wit:
We’ll get new government unemployment numbers later this morning but yesterday, Gallup—which measures without seasonal adjustment—reported that unemployment increased to 9.1% in February from 8.6% in January and 8.5% in December. Beyond that, underemployment, which combines the percentage of workers who are unemployed and the percentage working part time but wanting full-time work, increased to 19.1% last month.
On energy dependence, as he did last month, President Obama spoke this week again about how we can not drill our way to energy independence—and he does so with a clever line the media swallows hook, line, and sinker. He keeps speaking of us as having only 2% of the world’s oil reserves. As John Hinderaker points out though—when you hear this, that we only have 2% of the world’s oil reserves you automatically or naturally think that means we only have 2% of the world’s oil in the ground here. That’s not what “reserves” mean in the United States. Here, “reserves” means only oil that is
1) legal to extract under current laws and regulations, and 2) economic to extract at current prices. So ANWR isn’t part of our reserves; the large majority of offshore areas that are off-limits to drilling are not part of our reserves; and all other deposits that can’t be accessed under current EPA regulations are not part of our reserves. Our reserves would grow overnight if the Democrats would allow more areas to be opened up for energy development.
Because the actual truth is the U.S. actually has the largest fossil fuel deposits of any country in the world. So, to give you the real truth here, I give you what the Investors’ Business Daily wrote on this:
President Obama canceled leases on federal lands in Utah, suspended them in Montana, delayed them in Colorado and Utah, and canceled lease sales off the Virginia coast.
His administration also has been slow-walking permits in the Gulf of Mexico, approving far fewer while stretching out review times, according to the Greater New Orleans Gulf Permit Index. The Energy Dept. says Gulf oil output will be down 17% by the end of 2013, compared with the start of 2011. Swift Energy President Bruce Vincent is right to say Obama has “done nothing but restrict access and delay permitting.”
Now read what he did yesterday—he lobbied Senators not to over-ride his veto of the XL Pipeline from Canada. As Mitch McConnell said: “at a moment when millions are out of work, gas prices are skyrocketing and the Middle East is in turmoil, we’ve got a president who’s up making phone calls trying to block a pipeline here at home.”
As for enemies and allies, the President gave a speech at AIPAC on the US and Israel last weekend and said “So there should not be a shred of doubt by now -- when the chips are down, I have Israel’s back.”
It’s not true. And by the way: Has anyone asked why the chips would ever be down? Israel has always had to defend itself, it has never known peace. So when the chips are down it can only mean one of two things: “all the time” or when the international community (read: the US) is pressuring Israel. Since we known it’s not all the time, let’s look at the latter:
Dan Senor published a pretty good timeline:
In October 2011, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta publically said Israel was “isolating itself” in world affairs.
President Obama, from day one of his administration, has been pressuring Israel to freeze settlement building—and putting such building of housing on par with Palestinian terrorism. Housing on the one hand; the slaughter of innocents on the other.
By the way, Mr. Panetta's criticism was promptly endorsed by the Turkish Prime Minister, a harsh critic of Israel, who said Mr. Panetta was "correct in his assumptions." Indeed, almost every time the Obama administration has scolded Israel, the charges have been repeated by Turkish officials.
In November of last year, in advance of meeting with the Israeli Defense Minister, Mr. Panetta publicly previewed his message. He would warn Israel against a military strike on Iran's nuclear program: "There are going to be economic consequences . . . that could impact not just on our economy but the world economy." Even if the administration felt compelled to deliver this message privately, why undercut the perception of U.S.-Israel unity on the military option?
That same month, an open microphone caught part of a private conversation between Mr. Obama and French President Nicolas Sarkozy. Mr. Sarkozy said of Israel's premier, "I can't stand Netanyahu. He's a liar." Rather than defend Israel's back, Mr. Obama piled on: "You're tired of him; what about me? I have to deal with him every day."
In December of last year, again undercutting the credibility of the Israeli military option, Mr. Panetta used a high-profile speech to challenge the idea that an Israeli strike could eliminate or substantially delay Iran's nuclear program, and he warned that "the United States would obviously be blamed."
Mr. Panetta also addressed the Israeli-Palestinian peace process by lecturing Israel to "just get to the damn table." This, despite the fact that Israel had been actively pursuing direct negotiations with the Palestinians, only to watch the Palestinian president abandon talks and unilaterally pursue statehood at the U.N. The Obama team thought the problem was with Israel.
In January of this year, Mr. Obama referred to the Turkish Prime Minister as one of the five world leaders with whom he has developed "bonds of trust." According to Mr. Obama, these bonds have "allowed us to execute effective diplomacy." The Turkish government had earlier sanctioned a six-ship flotilla to penetrate Israel's naval blockade of Hamas-controlled Gaza. Mr. Erdogan had said that Israel's defensive response was "cause for war."
At a conference in Tunis last month, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was asked about Mr. Obama pandering to "Zionist lobbies." She acknowledged that it was "a fair question" and went on to explain that any pandering is simply election year politics.
All of this has been so bad—never mind the stiffing of Benjamin Netanyahu or the comparison to the Jim Crow South Hillary Clinton made to Israel— that even other Democrats have weighed in. Just last year, a number of leading Democrats, including Sen. Harry Reid and Rep. Steny Hoyer, felt compelled to speak out in response to Mr. Obama's proposal for Israel to return to its indefensible pre-1967 borders. Rep. Eliot Engel told CNN that "for the president to emphasize that . . . was a very big mistake."
In April 2010, 38 Democratic senators signed a critical letter to Secretary Clinton following the administration's public (and private) dressing down of the Israeli government.
Sen. Charles Schumer used even stronger language in 2010 when he responded to "something I have never heard before," from the Obama State Department, "which is, the relationship of Israel and the United States depends on the pace of the negotiations. That is terrible. That is a dagger."
Sen. Joe Lieberman said of Mr. Obama last year, "I think he's handled the relationship with Israel in a way that has encouraged Israel's enemies, and really unsettled the Israelis."
I could go on and on.
We are now having to deal with Syria-again. But who appeased Syria? President Bush yanked our Ambassador from Syria; President Obama put a US Ambassador back in. Why did he do that, we should ask. Why, last year did Hillary Clinton call Syria’s Assad a reformer? We should ask. We have to deal with Iran. Who said Iran was not a threat and sought (and still seeks) non-preconditional talks with Iran? And, when democratic protestors took to the streets of Iran, who took the side of the mullahs? President Obama. Why did he do that, we should ask. And when our and Israel’s long-time ally in Egypt was clinging to power, who helped push him out so that the Muslim Brothers could take over? President Obama. Why did he do that, we should ask.
I return to our main point: high unemployment, high spending, record deficits, record debt, more energy dependence, fallen allies, and strengthened enemies.
And there are those who think that is just fine. It isn’t. Tell your friends about some of these facts, and ask them: “Why would our President do this?” I’d like to know the answer. We all should—because it’s about accountability here. That’s why we hold elections after all.
Monday, March 5, 2012
SL 03-02-2012
Time to Wake Up
March 2, 2012
As Broadcast on Bill Bennett’s Morning in America
By Seth Leibsohn
The New York Times headline this morning reads, “For Obama and Netanyahu, Wariness on Iran will Dominate Talks.” The article goes on to speak of the tensions between the two leaders. The truth is, there is tension between the two countries, tension between America and Israel. And this, as the world’s leading terrorist state—Iran—, and a threat to both countries, is becoming ever more dangerous.
It need not have been this way and it should not be this way. I have always maintained that the modern-day reason Israel and the United States should be as one on foreign and defense policy is based on a simple, three-fold, concept that almost any high school student can understand: Democracies should support democracies, allies should support allies, and when you have a common enemy you should make a common cause. There are other reasons for the two countries’ alliances, but the three I just mentioned, it seems to me, are and should be the geopolitical reasons.
We know a few things about Iran and Israel. The first thing we know is that the two leading terrorist organizations that threaten Israel and maim and kill Israelis by the day are funded by Iran. The video footage we’ve seen of children dressed as suicide bombers and trained to become suicide bombers—that couldn’t happen without Iran’s support. That’s not a legal guess, that’s simply a fact. The second thing we know is Iran does not want Israel to exist. President Machmoud Achmadinejad as well as successive ayatollahs have said Israel should be wiped off the map.
We also know a few things about Iran and the United States, although it needs to be repeated. Iran has been at war with the United States for over thirty years. Iran has been involved in killing our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. And its terrorist organizations have long-targeted America. To cite, again, Jeff Jacoby’s rendering:
“We consider [America] to be an enemy because it wants to humiliate our governments, our regimes, and our peoples," railed Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, at an enormous rally in February 2005. …"It is the greatest plunderer of our treasures, our oil, and our resources. . . . Our motto, which we are not afraid to repeat year after year, is: 'Death to America!' "
And from tens of thousands of Hezbollah supporters came the answering cry: "Death to America! Death to America! Death to America! Death to America!"
These are anything but empty threats. Prior to 9/11, Hezbollah was responsible for more American casualties than any other terrorist organization in the world. Among its victims was Army officer William F. Buckley, the CIA station chief in Beirut who was abducted by Hezbollah and who died after 15 months in captivity of torture and illness.
And the young Navy diver Robert Stethem, singled out during the …Hezbollah hijacking of TWA Flight 847 and brutally beaten before being shot to death.
And William Higgins, a colonel in the Marine Corps and commander of the UN peacekeeping mission in Lebanon, who was seized by Hezbollah …tortured, and eventually hanged. As Michelle Malkin noted … the tape of Higgins, bound and gagged and swinging from a rope, was one of the first publicly disseminated jihadi snuff films.
And the 241 Marines murdered by Hezbollah on Oct. 23, 1983, when a suicide bomber drove a truck rigged with 12,000 pounds of TNT into their barracks at the Beirut airport.
And the 19 US servicemen killed in the 1996 bombing of Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia.
For more than two decades, Hezbollah's Shi'ite fanatics, backed by Iran and sheltered by Syria, have made it their business to murder, maim, hijack, and kidnap Americans with the same irrational hostility they harbor for Israel.
There’s a reason the Iranian Parliament opens its sessions with a chant of “Death to America.” There’s a reason Achmadinejad has said the United States is a “a Satanic power that will, with God's will, be annihilated.” It’s because Iran’s leaders believe this, they believe in our death.
Now, bear with me a moment. Can anyone cite to me a memorable thing President Barack Obama has said about Iran and its danger to the United States other than he wants to negotiate with the regime, or pass more sanctions against it? Can we cite anything like what other presidents have said about our enemies? Any documentation or detailing of the threat Iran poses to the world and ourselves? Recall how Ronald Reagan used to do this all the time when dealing with the country that wanted to blow out all the moral lights in his time; how he prepared this country and sent signals to the USSR by calling it an “evil empire” and “the focus of evil in the modern world,” and his repeated condemnations of it.
Now, can we recall things President Barack Obama and his administration have said about Israel? I can recall that last year President Barack Obama dictated to Israel what its borders should be. And I can recall three different Obama foreign policy officials publicly rebuking Israel last year, with a US Ambassador stating that Israel is responsible for Muslim anti-Semitism; with Leon Panetta saying Israel needs to get back “to the damned table;”and with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton going so far as to compare Israel to the segregated Jim Crow South in America.
That is how this administration has treated our ally Israel. Now, beyond treating Israel that way, what do we think other nations took from those messages about where the administration is and will be when it comes to the Middle East?
I heard another talk show host recently ask a guest if gas prices would go up in America should Israel attack Iran. The answer is they probably will. But, if that is in the offing, what has this administration done to lower gas prices, or, equally important, prepare this country for a gas shortage?
The following comes from an analysis on John Boehner’s website:
Just months after President Obama’s Energy Secretary said, “Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe,” the Obama administration begins “scrapping leases for oil-shale development” and cancels 77 leases for oil and gas production in Utah.
In January of 2010, the Obama administration announces new bureaucratic hurdles to American energy production that Secretary Salazar admitted “could add delays to the leasing and drilling process.”
In March of 2010, instead of opening new areas to energy exploration and development, President Obama blocks deep-ocean energy production on 60 percent of America’s Outer Continental Shelf.
In December of 2010, the president re-imposes and expands the moratorium on offshore energy production.
In May of last year, he White House issued a formal statement opposing House-passed Restarting American Offshore Leasing Now Act and Putting the Gulf of Mexico Back to Work Act, legislation designed to jumpstart American energy production, address rising gas prices, and help create new jobs.
In June of last year, the White House opposed the House-passed Jobs & Energy Permitting Act that would unlock an estimated 27 billion barrels of oil and 132 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.
In November of last year, the Obama Administration released a plan for a five-year moratorium on offshore energy production, placing “some of the most promising energy resources in the world off-limits,” according to the House Natural Resources Committee.
And in January of this year, President Obama rejected the bipartisan Keystone XL pipeline and the more than 20,000 jobs that would come with it.
Just to remind, by the way, the average price of the lowest grade gas today is 3.73. In California it’s over four dollars. When president Obama took office the average price was 1.66.
Again, I urge, we should have stickers on our gas covers on our cars with President Obama’s face, saying “Obama gas.” And we’ll talk about a bumper sticker contest on this as well.
But there’s one other point I want to make about Iran and President Obama. War may come with the United States. I should rephrase that: The United States may, indeed, have to join the war Iran has been waging against us for 33 years. But it didn’t have to come to this. In 2009, there was an organic revolution taking place in Iran where leaders and protestors asked, literally, begged: “Where’s Obama?” “Where is the United States.” They were imprisoned and killed. And President Obama? He said we would not “meddle.” He didn’t say that about Egypt—he meddled and we got the Muslim Brotherhood instead of the surety of a long-time ally. And he has meddled in Israel as well. But with Iran, the message was we would stay “neutral,” a term I place in quotes because neutrality is not what maintains when the choices are the side with the guns or the side with those who merely march in their sneakers.
No. There is such a thing as a false peace and a false neutrality. There is also a notion of reckless endangerment. And we, the United States, especially over the past three years, have been engaging in this far too dangerously—to others, but most importantly, again, to ourselves.
March 2, 2012
As Broadcast on Bill Bennett’s Morning in America
By Seth Leibsohn
The New York Times headline this morning reads, “For Obama and Netanyahu, Wariness on Iran will Dominate Talks.” The article goes on to speak of the tensions between the two leaders. The truth is, there is tension between the two countries, tension between America and Israel. And this, as the world’s leading terrorist state—Iran—, and a threat to both countries, is becoming ever more dangerous.
It need not have been this way and it should not be this way. I have always maintained that the modern-day reason Israel and the United States should be as one on foreign and defense policy is based on a simple, three-fold, concept that almost any high school student can understand: Democracies should support democracies, allies should support allies, and when you have a common enemy you should make a common cause. There are other reasons for the two countries’ alliances, but the three I just mentioned, it seems to me, are and should be the geopolitical reasons.
We know a few things about Iran and Israel. The first thing we know is that the two leading terrorist organizations that threaten Israel and maim and kill Israelis by the day are funded by Iran. The video footage we’ve seen of children dressed as suicide bombers and trained to become suicide bombers—that couldn’t happen without Iran’s support. That’s not a legal guess, that’s simply a fact. The second thing we know is Iran does not want Israel to exist. President Machmoud Achmadinejad as well as successive ayatollahs have said Israel should be wiped off the map.
We also know a few things about Iran and the United States, although it needs to be repeated. Iran has been at war with the United States for over thirty years. Iran has been involved in killing our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. And its terrorist organizations have long-targeted America. To cite, again, Jeff Jacoby’s rendering:
“We consider [America] to be an enemy because it wants to humiliate our governments, our regimes, and our peoples," railed Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, at an enormous rally in February 2005. …"It is the greatest plunderer of our treasures, our oil, and our resources. . . . Our motto, which we are not afraid to repeat year after year, is: 'Death to America!' "
And from tens of thousands of Hezbollah supporters came the answering cry: "Death to America! Death to America! Death to America! Death to America!"
These are anything but empty threats. Prior to 9/11, Hezbollah was responsible for more American casualties than any other terrorist organization in the world. Among its victims was Army officer William F. Buckley, the CIA station chief in Beirut who was abducted by Hezbollah and who died after 15 months in captivity of torture and illness.
And the young Navy diver Robert Stethem, singled out during the …Hezbollah hijacking of TWA Flight 847 and brutally beaten before being shot to death.
And William Higgins, a colonel in the Marine Corps and commander of the UN peacekeeping mission in Lebanon, who was seized by Hezbollah …tortured, and eventually hanged. As Michelle Malkin noted … the tape of Higgins, bound and gagged and swinging from a rope, was one of the first publicly disseminated jihadi snuff films.
And the 241 Marines murdered by Hezbollah on Oct. 23, 1983, when a suicide bomber drove a truck rigged with 12,000 pounds of TNT into their barracks at the Beirut airport.
And the 19 US servicemen killed in the 1996 bombing of Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia.
For more than two decades, Hezbollah's Shi'ite fanatics, backed by Iran and sheltered by Syria, have made it their business to murder, maim, hijack, and kidnap Americans with the same irrational hostility they harbor for Israel.
There’s a reason the Iranian Parliament opens its sessions with a chant of “Death to America.” There’s a reason Achmadinejad has said the United States is a “a Satanic power that will, with God's will, be annihilated.” It’s because Iran’s leaders believe this, they believe in our death.
Now, bear with me a moment. Can anyone cite to me a memorable thing President Barack Obama has said about Iran and its danger to the United States other than he wants to negotiate with the regime, or pass more sanctions against it? Can we cite anything like what other presidents have said about our enemies? Any documentation or detailing of the threat Iran poses to the world and ourselves? Recall how Ronald Reagan used to do this all the time when dealing with the country that wanted to blow out all the moral lights in his time; how he prepared this country and sent signals to the USSR by calling it an “evil empire” and “the focus of evil in the modern world,” and his repeated condemnations of it.
Now, can we recall things President Barack Obama and his administration have said about Israel? I can recall that last year President Barack Obama dictated to Israel what its borders should be. And I can recall three different Obama foreign policy officials publicly rebuking Israel last year, with a US Ambassador stating that Israel is responsible for Muslim anti-Semitism; with Leon Panetta saying Israel needs to get back “to the damned table;”and with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton going so far as to compare Israel to the segregated Jim Crow South in America.
That is how this administration has treated our ally Israel. Now, beyond treating Israel that way, what do we think other nations took from those messages about where the administration is and will be when it comes to the Middle East?
I heard another talk show host recently ask a guest if gas prices would go up in America should Israel attack Iran. The answer is they probably will. But, if that is in the offing, what has this administration done to lower gas prices, or, equally important, prepare this country for a gas shortage?
The following comes from an analysis on John Boehner’s website:
Just months after President Obama’s Energy Secretary said, “Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe,” the Obama administration begins “scrapping leases for oil-shale development” and cancels 77 leases for oil and gas production in Utah.
In January of 2010, the Obama administration announces new bureaucratic hurdles to American energy production that Secretary Salazar admitted “could add delays to the leasing and drilling process.”
In March of 2010, instead of opening new areas to energy exploration and development, President Obama blocks deep-ocean energy production on 60 percent of America’s Outer Continental Shelf.
In December of 2010, the president re-imposes and expands the moratorium on offshore energy production.
In May of last year, he White House issued a formal statement opposing House-passed Restarting American Offshore Leasing Now Act and Putting the Gulf of Mexico Back to Work Act, legislation designed to jumpstart American energy production, address rising gas prices, and help create new jobs.
In June of last year, the White House opposed the House-passed Jobs & Energy Permitting Act that would unlock an estimated 27 billion barrels of oil and 132 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.
In November of last year, the Obama Administration released a plan for a five-year moratorium on offshore energy production, placing “some of the most promising energy resources in the world off-limits,” according to the House Natural Resources Committee.
And in January of this year, President Obama rejected the bipartisan Keystone XL pipeline and the more than 20,000 jobs that would come with it.
Just to remind, by the way, the average price of the lowest grade gas today is 3.73. In California it’s over four dollars. When president Obama took office the average price was 1.66.
Again, I urge, we should have stickers on our gas covers on our cars with President Obama’s face, saying “Obama gas.” And we’ll talk about a bumper sticker contest on this as well.
But there’s one other point I want to make about Iran and President Obama. War may come with the United States. I should rephrase that: The United States may, indeed, have to join the war Iran has been waging against us for 33 years. But it didn’t have to come to this. In 2009, there was an organic revolution taking place in Iran where leaders and protestors asked, literally, begged: “Where’s Obama?” “Where is the United States.” They were imprisoned and killed. And President Obama? He said we would not “meddle.” He didn’t say that about Egypt—he meddled and we got the Muslim Brotherhood instead of the surety of a long-time ally. And he has meddled in Israel as well. But with Iran, the message was we would stay “neutral,” a term I place in quotes because neutrality is not what maintains when the choices are the side with the guns or the side with those who merely march in their sneakers.
No. There is such a thing as a false peace and a false neutrality. There is also a notion of reckless endangerment. And we, the United States, especially over the past three years, have been engaging in this far too dangerously—to others, but most importantly, again, to ourselves.
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